Everything, Everywhere, Write #3: Who You Read Matters
"Reading people who came before us or are opening the path, like us, wider for those who come after us is essential."
A column about embracing and nurturing your creative journey daily, allowing for growth and flourishing while releasing guilt and self-doubt.
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When I was at Goddard College in my low-residency MFA program, one of my advisors said: “You will never be able to read just for pleasure anymore.” At first I didn’t know what she meant. As I pondered her words, I understood she wasn’t saying reading would no longer give me pleasure, she was saying that I would now always be reading with my writer/editor hat on. She was right. I had by then written a number of short reflection papers that focused on character development, dialogue, and the use of descriptors, among other craft categories. The assignments were to read a book with my eye on one specific aspect I wanted to improve by noticing and analyzing an author who did it well. I insisted on women of color advisors and together we developed a reading list that was 85% BIPOC authors. Reading people who came before us or are opening the path, like us, wider for those who come after us is essential, an affirmation of our voices as a chorus, breaking through internal and external barriers daily. So when I say reading is essential to your writing life, perhaps I must be more specific. Who you read matters. Check your statistics and make sure you are preferencing role models who write outside the status quo.
When I tell myself I will only read one more chapter before turning out the lights and I read three, I ask myself what they are doing to keep me so interested in the plot that I need to read what happens next.
Since my program ended in 2018, I still wear my writer/editor hat every time I am reading, whether an actual book or an audiobook. When I want to skip ahead, I stop to see why the author lost my attention. Were they telling me something they had already shown me or was a character annoying me by being too predictable? When I tell myself I will only read one more chapter before turning out the lights and I read three, I ask myself what they are doing to keep me so interested in the plot that I need to read what happens next. You are likely seeing how this resonates with my previous column on TV watching. Just one more episode and then it is an hour past when we meant to turn off the TV.
This inability to just read (or watch or listen to in the case of audiobooks) for pleasure is a small cost for all the richness we glean from other writers’ words. I read mysteries for a higher “pleasure” scale, but they must be well written and have interesting characters in settings about which I know very little. I used to be able to enjoy a People magazine on a plane ride, but that no longer holds my attention. I yearn for writers who go deep and nurture my own bravery to go further than I am comfortable doing.
Reading is the best kind of learning once we tame our propensity to compare ourselves to other writers. I remind myself that I want to experience how others claim their voice so I can claim mine–not to doubt my voice. Another reason reading is essential to a writing life is that it informs us of where our writing fits into the canon and why it is important to keep writing when you can’t find books that fully speak to you. Toni Morrison said: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Most book proposals will ask you for comparable titles, which means you have to be reading books that might fit into that category and understand why yours is adding to the field rather than being repetitive. As BIPOC writers, we are not allowed that privilege the way white men often are.
Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, and while she uses punctuation in the title, there is a lack of periods and commas in the book, while question marks and dashes are used. I would never have known that if I had listened to it and wouldn’t have considered how that decision changed how I read it.
Audiobooks are both a wonderful addition to “reading” and sometimes challenging because of this predisposition to take stories apart. When a beautiful line is spoken, it is often even more wondrous than when read. Yet I cannot re-read it a few times to savor the craft like with an actual book (or e-book) and I am not always in a position (say when listening as I drive) to push the “go back 30 seconds” button. On the other hand, characters come alive in ways they can’t on a flat page. Make no mistake, the narrator is everything and the author is not always the best choice, even if they know their story as no one can. It is a skill to narrate well, as is the case with translating. Knowing a book or a language does not mean you naturally have the talent. I test the narrator before I commit to an audiobook. I am not afraid to change my mind after a few chapters if the quality of the narration dips and I am paying more attention to the narrator’s voice than to the story. So many pros and cons! The actual words in front of me let me see punctuation and all the other nuances that a writer uses to tell their story. For example, Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, and while she uses punctuation in the title, there is a lack of periods and commas in the book, while question marks and dashes are used. I would never have known that if I had listened to it and wouldn’t have considered how that decision changed how I read it. Another recent example is Zadie Smiths’ book The Fraud. She is a delightful narrator but I can “hear” that she uses all sorts of interesting ways of dividing up the book with volumes, epigraphs, and relatively short chapters. I can’t fully “see” how that impacts me as a reader. If there is a book I might use in my writing life for more than pleasure, I would have to have the actual book. Even deciding on actual vs audio is part of understanding the role of reading in your life.
All said, I would rather read than listen, because as a writer I do more than consume books for pleasure. I use audiobooks to rest my eyes from an illness I am managing and to be able to listen while I drive or cook. I often have an actual book and an audiobook going at the same time–such is the joy of having options.
Next we’ll delve into the intangibles of dreaming, pondering, and conversations as part of your writing life, with a surprise twist ending! It involves a bold call to action quote from a Haitian writer.
How do you find yourself being a writer/editor when you read?
What do you love about a book in hand or a narrator in your ear?
Let us know the answers to our two questions above.
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Please share the reading list you developed while pursuing your MFA, thank you.