On Reading

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"If you don't have time to read, you don't have time (or the tools) to write."

                                                                                                -- Steven King

Reading and writing are kinda like the chicken and the egg for me. Not because I wrote before I could read. But I'm sure I told stories before I could read. So the gift of writing just made it possible to tell stories whether or not I had an audience.

When it comes to reading, I think people read according to their need. If you are considering buying a car, you read for information -- collecting facts, comparing them, and considering them. If you are on a spiritual journey, you read with the heart, seeking enlightenment. If you are tired and need to
relax so you can sleep, you read to be taken away from the day that has pushed you and pulled you into such knots and grotesqueries that you do not recognize yourself. Reading frees you to drift into Shakespeare's "Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care."

And then there's assigned reading for a grade in class; reading recommended by a colleague or friend so you can share thoughts and opinions; and, maybe best of all, entertainment -- purely entertainment. To scare you with things that go bump in the night. To thrill you with a high speed chase, with high decibel explosions, with a death-defying leap from a rocky cliff. To break your heart with lost love or failed dreams. To exhilarate you with love found again and dreams realized.

But, if you're a writer, you may have become an analytical reader -- someone who parses formats and language use and rules of style.

Dull! you say. Then you are not a writer. I have in this later part of my life come to enjoy discovering formats and language use and style in those books that I particularly like.

I used never to reread a book. Any book. No matter if I liked it and certainly not if I didn't like it.

First, I learned to watch movies more than once. If the movie was done well, I almost always got caught up in the story the first time I watched. I could not then and cannot now appreciate the structure. Indeed, if it is done well, I can't even see it. I do not hear the words as word choices the writer puts in the actors' mouths. I do not recognize the nuances the directer catches and keeps -- the framing of a scene; the lighting on the main character's hair, sometimes beautiful, sometimes disheveled; the color of a ribbon; the way an actor walks, shoulders upright and proud or collapsed in on them self, defeated. The first time through, I am unaware of all the intentional components used to draw me into the story, to help me experience it as if it were first-hand.

I watch it again looking for those intentional things.

Now I read that way, too. First for the story. Then, if it works, I read it again to see how it's put together. What is it about this book that generates thought, that inspires emotion? What is it that keeps me turning pages and wanting to see how it ends? That makes me care what happens to the characters? These are the elements and strategies I want to employ in my writing.

The hard kind of analytical reading comes when I don't like the book. Whether I like or dislike a book seems not to be dependent on how revered the author is or if it's on The New York Times Best Seller List. And it is the book I don't like that I must explore without the comforts of enthusiasm and admiration. I must identify why I don't like it?

Is it inaccessible? The James Boys come to mind -- James Joyce and Henry James.

Is it the story's premise? Steven King whose books I cannot finish before dark and can't read after dark. Tom Clancy who starts wars in altogether too believable ways. Both, by-the-bye are excellent writers. I just don't like such terrifying stories.

Poorly written books by people I like. I always want to give them the name of my writing teacher and encourage them to hire a good editor -- not just a line editor, but content, too.

These are the books that may very well improve my writing the most. These document the places I do not want to go and the manner I do not want to use to get there. I want to write books people can read reasonably easily. Books that will be exciting enough, but without the danger of nightmares. And books that will not jar them out of the story because of poor craft.

Writing is hard work that requires I study the craft. That's what reading is -- analytical reading is studying the craft.

To the barricades! Into the trenches! I raise my clinched fist and shout, "Read on!"