The person you want to read is the person who’s starving to write.

Anyone can string a handful of easy words into a recognizable sentence, like a Scrabble player with no patience.

But the sentences you want to read are written by the guy who writes like he always has the impossible Scrabble hand: seven blanks.

The page is empty. The options are endless. He’s starving to write, and he’ll stare and sweat and edit and bang his brain against his soul until he figures out what he’s trying to say.

That’s the guy you want to read.

Anyone can toss words around, just like anyone can roll dice.

But what you want to find on the pages you flip is the fuel and fire of edited failure, the words of one who didn’t surrender the pen till two dozen drafts into the battle.

You want to read the fifth word he chose, not the first. You want the seventh version of his sentence order, not the second. You want words with scars in their backstory because they were drug around the page by an author possessed with the regal possibilities of a sentence.

You want this guy: “He weighed and studied and arranged many proverbs with great care . . . he sought to find words of delight” (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10).

Why? Because you don’t just want to read. You want to read.

So sit with the one who’s starving to write, because if he’s cooking up words to feed his own soul, you’ll find yourself seated at a feast.