A short while ago a writer was kind enough to contact me and say that my thoughts as a reader made her feel that her book had become more than it was. This is exactly as it should be. A writer grows a book and then a reader grows it more. Writers sometimes have a little help in producing finished books and often humbly express gratitude for this in their acknowledgements. But generally a book is, in essence, the work of one person. It involves one person's imagination. When it is read it it involves two peoples' imaginations, the writer's and the reader's. Whether explicitly or not, a good writer puts much of their own experience and understanding of life into their book. A good reader adds their own experience and understanding of life too. And they are not the same. They never can be. Writers do a truly wonderful thing. In giving a book to the world they generously relinquish ownership of it. They give their own imaginings and experiences to their readers. And their readers grow from it. But the writers' characters, their worlds, their stories are not as fixed by words as some people might think. In a reader's mind they will become different because the reader's imagination and experiences are different. However the writer's experiences and the reader's are no longer separate. They are magically brought together, joined by the book. And the book grows as a result. Readers cannot give back so directly to the writer, but they do contribute enormously to the creation that is the book. The book read is more than the book written.
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