Reading, writing, and the love of both

I just finished a DVD called The Stone Reader, ostensibly about a book called The Stones of Summer, which appeared in 1972 to a fantastic review in the New York Times, and then disappeared shortly thereafter. The documentarian, Mark Moscowitz, started it then, couldn't finish it, picked it up again years later, loved it, decided to find more by the author, and came to find out both the book and the author had fallen off the map. So he began a long journey to track the author and his work down, and succeeded.
It's really about reading, and the writing process, and the love of both. In the course of his journey he meets and interviews some fabulous, and fabulously weird, literary figures. Oh the insights they have into this strange work!
There is something ineffable about the process of reading a book, even more mysterious about the writing of a book. I love to read, love it! But the writing of a book, the creation of a world and the people in it, I find daunting in the extreme. I am with E.B. White when he says, "...leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence."
E.B. White, now there's a daunting role model to choose! I don't expect to ever live up to his accomplishment, or even come close to his skill as a writer, but something in his writing gives me a feeling of familiarity. As though he might have been my favorite great uncle who took the time from his busy life to send me letters, or when I'm browsing though the latest edition of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, wryly illustrated by Maira Kalman, he has just sent me a gentle reminder to tighten up my style, enlivened by the paintings of a whimsy filled friend who just happened to stop by.
I am a bookaholic, and even though friends tell me there are many worse things to be addicted to, it is still a chronic habit. When I don't have a book waiting for me at home I am bereft, lonely, missing that voice on the other side of the page beckoning me on into worlds upon worlds, universes outside of my own narrow experience.
Being able to create these worlds takes a time and energy I am only now beginning to understand. I noodle around here in my blog, taking some pains to stay on the topic I have set myself, but when I have just spent a week fully working mind and body at my new job, there is nothing in here except a slightly hysterical, (albeit endlessly amusing), wacko girl. Maybe I should let her at it, see what comes out. Writing, huh!