I’m jealous — I was on the way to being a top writer on Quora until I got banned for being too partisan. I’m still somewhat bitter about that.

But one thing I wanted to revisit was your statement: “As a writer, you read to understand the motivations of the characters. You read to see how and why the writer chose the vehicles, the vectors, the pace of the story.”

You hit the nail on the head. It doesn’t matter that the one book that I wrote and published (on Kindle) has sold less than ten copies since I published it five years ago, when I read a story, I find myself dissecting what the writer was doing and why he or she chose that word, that phrase, that plot twist. If I’m just a smidgen less entranced in the world the writer has presented, I find myself enjoying digging into the mind (and mindset) of the writer even more.

Thank you!