Writing to Read and Reading to Write

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Amanda

This is a bit off the beaten path, but it has to do with a recently-published article that addresses the way I read in a curious way.

Allow me to preface. I was an English tutor for years. My golden years of tutoring were spent at my college’s writing center, where structured training gave me wonderful, concrete tools that I still use to this day in my job as an editor.

My favorite technique was one I felt not only helped the students I guided but also helped me as I wrote my own essays. It’s a skill worth cultivating, and it’s simply this: learn how to read as a reader, not as an author.

It’s a bit infantilizing to ask writers to role play, I know. But you can’t imagine how revelatory it is as a college student to pick up an essay you wrote and think to yourself, “I am now my teacher, reading this essay for the first time.” All of a sudden, reading as your audience, you see that things you thought were implied don’t seem clear at all. The point of the essay isn’t obvious. Quotes from other sources are dropped into the text in ways that leave you thinking, “wait, what does your quoted material have to do with what you were just saying a sentence ago?” When you take some time away from your writing (enough time to help you forget your own train of thought as you wrote), distance yourself from your perspective as author, and consciously try to place yourself in the position a first-time reader, you can eliminate a great deal of spots where your writing is unclear.

My experience doing this role playing concerns expository writing–either I’d be doing it with my own essays or helping students do it with theirs. I write and edit mostly presentations of arguments, analyses, and explanations, both at work and in my spare time. Creative writing has never been my forte, and I don’t often write more than one or two creative pieces a year. Yet my greatest recreational delight, as you can probably gather from this blog, comes from reading creative work.

I love knowledge, but I need the information to be beamed into my head via laser or something. Reading nonfiction absolutely puts me to sleep. Even the things I’m most interested in–history, biography, natural science, cars, and yes, even grammar and language–can only command my total focus for a few minutes when presented in book form. I read almost solely fiction because I adore stories, characters, symbols, experiences. I can’t create it myself for the life of me. But I love to enjoy others’ work.

An article called “The 10 Commandments of Reading Like a Writer” showed up in my Twitter feed the other day. Because its wording so closely mirrors (yet puts a twist on) my mantra of “read your writing like a reader,” I was intrigued. And I found that, though I’m not at all a creative writer, many of the things the article’s author lists are exactly the things I do when I read. It’s why many of my blog posts even exist.

The author, K.M. Weiland, first says that you should be able to see both the good and the bad in the authors writing and, instead of focusing on it, learn from it. I’m often very much aware of an author’s technique, and I’m often thinking of where it’s going wrong and right. I’m lucky that I’m able to be caught up in a story while understanding there’s a real person who’s penned the thing, composing every word and orchestrating every turn. Paying attention to these things things doesn’t detach me from a novel, and in that sense, I think I’m pretty blessed. But my ultimate goal isn’t to write myself–it’s to understand what I like about writers and help me know why I think what I read is good or bad.

The article’s author also encourages her reader to take in works that are superior to what you produce, saying “Absorb them like a sponge. Figure out how they tick. Supposedly we’re each an aggregate of the ten people with whom we spend the most time. Same goes for the authors we read.” Funny–I should be a better creative writer from all my reading, shouldn’t I? I spend way more time with great authors than I do actual people. But I know what she’s saying. I love becoming acquainted with a really great author and taking in all their techniques. I love experiencing something and then trying to figure out how he or she did that–made me feel the way I felt, react the way I react. In a lot of ways, I feel it’s like watching a magic trick and allowing myself to be totally astonished. Then I learn how the trick is done. But seeing the trick isn’t ruined for me once the secret is revealed; rather, it’s enhanced when I watch someone with great skill do it so smoothly and with such finesse that I’m still enraptured. And awareness I would never have the grace to pull off the same maneuvers only enhances the experience.

The author of the article suggests to mark up your books like crazy, which I also do. Anyone who’s ever let into either my personal book stash or Kindle will see an abundance of observations, connections, and (in books with which I’ve had bones to pick) obscenely-worded tirades that would make the squeamish blush. I revere the skills of the author, but I never have been the type to see books themselves as sacred objects. They are alive and meant for interaction. Writing all over books is how I interact. I image this may result in problems one day–I might skew a future reading by prejudicing myself toward old interpretations just by their presence in the margins when I’d otherwise be open to a new interpretation. But if I find this happening, I just buy a new copy. The glory of the Gutenberg is that books aren’t sacred. They’re a dime a dozen (literally so, at garage sales and your library book sales).

But the article’s reading-as-writer point I liked best and related to most is the “study specific topics” suggestion. Here, she suggests doing what I do to particularly riveting songs–dissecting them piece by piece.

If I find a song a really like and that I also think is complex, I like to go through the track several times, once focusing only on the bass line, once only on rhythm guitar, once only on drums, etc., until I’ve figured out how every piece fits together. Weiland suggests doing a similar thing in her “reading to write” article, specifically “studying narrative, dialogue, character arcs, or foreshadowing.” It’s not often I’ll actually go through and read a book over and over, once looking at character arcs, once examining foreshadowing, etc., but I do try very hard to pay attention to how all these the instruments come together to make a symphony. And I think you can only do that if you’re cognizant of all the parts.

Anyway, I thought it was very interesting that I, without ever having any hopes (or illusions) of becoming a novel-writer, accidentally practice all the reading techniques she suggests for becoming a better novel-writer. I wonder if it’s from all that advocating for role playing in my college’s writing center. The reverse of reading your own writing as if you were the audience is to actually be the intended audience and try to understand the author. And I very much love to use a book to pick the author’s brain. It allows me to enjoy what I read so much more and appreciate a talent I simply don’t have.

Writing vs. Speaking: Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Amanda

I’m wandering my way through Donald Palmer’s Structuralism and Poststructuralism for Beginners. (And even the beginner-oriented explanation of this theory/school of criticism/worldview is tremendously hard to comprehend, but this book does a decent job of at least making you able to speak the language of the theorists.) In section on Jacques Derrida, Palmer talks about the precedence set by past thinkers for shunning written language and favoring spoken language. This pretty much blew my mind, for a reason I’ll get to later.

Palmer begins with Socrates, who believed that “true philosophy had to be a living, conversational exchange of ideas.” This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s studied philosophy, since it’s well known that Plato, speaking for Socrates, wrote in dialogue. The tradition of seeing writing as an empty version or hollow imitation of speaking continues. Palmer lists a series of people who felt the same way: Aristotle, Paul the apostle, Rousseau, Saussure. For theorists coming from a tradition of Freudian thinking, this makes sense to me. Spoken language can reveal underlying beliefs and motivations, providing information about people and society that written language cannot as easily show. (Think Freudian slips.) That’s because written communication (minus the infamous 2AM drunken text message, of course) is a more self-censored, deliberate form of expression.

But Palmer even discusses the fact that Claude Levi-Strauss felt guilty about introducing a written language to a tribe in South America that, presumably, only communicated via spoken word. What confuses me most about this point of view is that people lump spoken and written communication under a general umbrella so unquestioningly. It’s as if the communication forms are washing machines, and people need to check consumer reports to see if the Maytag or the Kenmore unit is superior. In my mind, the spoken word and the written word are completely different, and they give us opportunities to do completely different things. Spoken word allows us to give multiple meanings to what we say through intonation and facial expression. The wonderful addition of sarcasm to our communication arsenal is a purely conversation-based development. (I’d argue that any writing that is sarcastic can only be identified as such from our experience of it in interpersonal interactions.) Banter and repertoires are more easily established from spoken communication. We also get immediate feedback on what we say, on which we can base our next word choices. But writing allows us, as I said before, to be deliberate. It allows us to craft an entire intricate story spanning thousands of pages, with every detail worked out. It lets us think carefully about our sentence structure without the jarring choppiness of long pauses. It gives us the opportunity to go on the record as saying something a certain way, which (ideally) is a documented defense against people reshaping your words. This is why it’s amazing to me that Levi-Strauss felt guilty for introducing writing to the Amazonian tribe. Their oral communication wasn’t being watered down; they, instead, were gaining a whole new method of communication in addition to the one they had.

For me, the difference between writing and speaking is so great, the two forms are barely comparable. At no time has this been more apparent to me than in the last few months as I’ve been interviewing. I’ve been applying for editing and writing jobs–in essence, jobs where I’d be paid to be a wordsmith. On paper–where it counts, in this case–the right way to say things comes naturally. I imagine authors often feel the same way. I’m thinking of reclusive, awkward novelists who struggle with real world relationships but are somehow masters of human interactions in their stories. In person, I struggle mightily for the right words, I draw blanks, and I put my foot in my mouth so often I’m surprised it isn’t stuck there. Now, over the course of the last few months, interviewing has been a kind of boot camp for me. I’ve managed to develop an in-person professionalism that is no longer feels stilted and like a mask. But the difference between my spoken communication and my written communication is still so vast that I hardly consider them comparable. And it isn’t just that I’m better at one than the other anymore–they just aren’t the same thing. They serve different purposes, and they add different things to our communication.

What gets really interesting is when these two communications come together. The journal I interned for just had its release party, and I was asked to do a reading of one of my poems. I had written a poem that I absolutely intended to be read aloud, so I was excited for the opportunity to share it. It’s ugly on paper, frankly. But, when performed, it has a flow that it lacks on paper, and it becomes a kind of hip-hop song (which is appropriate, because the poem’s setting is a club). This piece can’t live or breathe without both forms of communication.

So, is speaking vs. writing a battle worth having? Is one better than the other? Simple answer–in my world, it’s not even a question to be asking.

I Was a Second-Grade Editor

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Amanda

Guys. This is really exciting. I was born to be an editor.

I have been laid up with some kind of horrendous virus for the last few days, and I have taken the opportunity, when I have enough strength to hold a book, to read Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land, written and illustrated by Mr. Johnny Gruelle. This is what lit majors read when they’ve gotten their degree and are no longer have their reading schedule preordained by professors.

Just kidding, of course–my personal to-read list is staggering. But Raggedy Ann was purchased and lovingly cradled in infirm arms for nostalgic purposes. This was the first book I had read that was the equivalent, to second grade me, to a novel. No more “see Jane run”s for me. I was on to the ninety-six pagers.

This particular book provides me with my memories of the first time I discovered the places books could take you. I would sit in my tiny closet and get lost in ice grottos with flavored icicles hanging from ceilings, houses where dinner was turkey-shaped cakes and cream puffs, and kitchens where you could bake kittens into life–well, animated cookie-life.

As I read it all again, I remembered all the turns of phrase and the images so well. I must have read the book so many times because each sentence felt familiar. I even remember evaluating the language and thinking that the word “nice,” repeated over and over throughout descriptions might seem annoying in another place, but it worked so well here.

As I read it as an adult with a degree in the subject, I thought the same thing–that if it were any other work, I would red-pen the bejeezus out of “nice.” But the word creates a feel for this particular book and for the characters who use the word. For instance, in the second paragraph, there’s this: “It was quite dark, but that did not worry them for both Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy have bright little shoe button eyes. One can see very well with shoe button eyes if one is a rag doll stuffed with nice, clean, white cotton.” The “nice”s add something warm, assuring, and good natured to the storyteller and the characters. It’s so interesting that I knew it even when I was a miniature person–how words were shaping the general feel of what I was reading.

Tiny me had also caught a plot inconsistency then which I only remembered when I came across it near the end. In a list of some characters, there appears a gingerbread man heretofore unmentioned and never heard of again. I immediately was like, “OH YEAH, the mysterious gingerbread man! Mr. Gruelle, how did your editor miss it if a second grader found it?”

Well, okay, to call myself a second-grade editor is a little much, I guess. But besides experiencing the wonder of reading a book I knew so well such a very long time ago, I was in wonder of how similarly I thought of the book after so much time, reading, and school.

(Although my thoughts on the gendered behaviors of Ann and Andy are much more–well, they exist, as compared to in second grade. But that is another matter.)

Psycholoprophets–Chicago Zine Fest Reflections

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Amanda

Because the arm of the Lake Forest Press with which I’m most involved is so focused on the innovative, I’m always interested to see what the lit world looks like at this very bleeding-edge moment. (You’re welcome for that extremely gross cliche.) I know zines have been around for quite awhile (probably longer than you might think), but the zine culture right now is blossoming in a way I find really exciting. I love the political elements, the safe-space focus, the embrace of the quirk-tastic raunch, the free idea flow, and the encouragement of eccentricities. And while what I affectionately call “zine-land” certainly qualifies as fringe, it both hearkens to the past and hails the arrival of the future, as far as even mainstream literature goes. Zine-land is full psychologists and prophets.

Zines set you on Freud’s couch and trigger a kind of nostalgic collective memory. These little booklets tap into our longings for the days when priests lovingly hand-gilded swirly lines in margins and inked in dragons around the first letter of a chapter. Zines make us think of , say, the Book of Kells, but it also brings to mind Amish furniture, models of cars which had their own emblems and sense of individuality, that sort of thing. It isn’t just that these things that have the mark of a craftsman. It’s that they were done by an individual who invested time, effort, and the work of her own hand. Now, the semantics of this gets a little weird. This blog post is the work of my own hand–here I am, merrily clicking away at a keyboard. But the crafting of the zine is different. Even the items that are simply xeroxed originals seem to have a kind of charisma imbued into the pages. One of the zines I saw this weekend was called, “I Made This For You,” and THAT’S a guy who’s tapping into this charm of the handcrafted.

But zines look to the future, too. I think the literary future will be defined by the inclusion of multiple types of media for a more-than-just- reading experience, and the inclusion of such delightful visual interest at every table at zine-land this weekend shows how people making zines are on this pulse of what creates interest in our modern world. When you open a zine, you never know what you’re going to find, but it’s usually visually striking. (Actually, this is a little hypocritical, but I felt pretty sorry for the people who simply had zines full of words. Those words might have comprised the most beautiful, original work of fiction/poetry ever, but no one would ever know it because anyone who opens a zine and finds it full of words and nothing else usually just puts it back down.) Zines lean forward, looking to continue the tradition of postmodern disunity and reproduction play (for instance, the girl who cut up a Victoria’s Secret catalog and used it as her zine backdrop about body image), but they add an element of the former world of handcrafting, making it something totally new.

It’s amazing how zines can both look to the past and the future this way. They’re like the squinting modifier of the lit world, looking in two directions and ridiculed by big grammar for their non-compliance.

Addendum:

Dear all my Writing Center clients,

This will not work as an argument against me when I ask you to fix your squinting modifiers.

Sincerely,

Amanda

A Slight Diversion To Chat About Grammar

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Amanda

I’m not sure Bill Walsh’s Lapsing Into a Comma quite fits into the literature theme of the blog, but I just finished it, so I thought I’d discuss grammar today. Mr. Walsh is a self-proclaimed curmudgeon about grammar (though he is quick to point out he isn’t a purist, and made a good case that there’s a difference between the two). At one time, I could relate to the feeling of curmudgeonly-ness. (The current lack of curmudgeonly-ness is best exemplified by my use of the non-word “curmudgeonly-ness.”) Grammar was once my biggest focus when writing and–much worse for my popularity–reading. I suspect that’s because I had less confidence in what I had to say, so I concentrated more on how I said it. A part of me also probably wanted to take others down a peg, I’m ashamed to say. Nit-picking about grammar was my way to compensate for feeling inferior. It’s funny…I knew a lot less about grammar then than I do now, but in the last few years I’ve completely relaxed. I think there are several reasons for this.

First, I had a conversation with the manfriend,* who claimed that grammar nit-pickiness was just another way for people to announce their class or status. Once upon a time, velvet and feathers were the means by which one could proclaim superiority. Now, we need other ways to do that. Proper grammar use displays education and social grace (according to the manfriend). People with bad grammar skills seem, well, poor. People with good grammar skills probably also know on which side of the plate the salad fork should be placed. I disagreed and fought the whole way through the conversation, but it certainly got me thinking.

Second, I decided at some point that writing was not about elegance, perfection, or complexity of sentence structure–it was about communicating ideas. When I realized this, grammar’s purpose changed in my mind. It facilitates communication. It isn’t there to show everyone how proper I am.

Third, I read a book called Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Trusse, and, for the first time, I realized how often grammar is about taste, not about hard, fast rules. I don’t actually think that’s the lesson Trusse wanted me to get from the book, but whatever. Before, I figured that every grammar question had an exact right answer. It was just a question of whether or not I knew it. But, honestly, some things are just about choice. Comma use, especially, is often a matter of the writer’s discretion. For instance, I’m pretty sure I could have omitted the commas after “use” and after “especially” in that last sentence, and it would still be grammatically correct–some would argue that “especially” is a parenthetical element, some wouldn’t. (But, man, do I love commas. So I didn’t.)

Fourth, tutoring really helped me gain perspective on what purpose grammar should serve. Looking at peer essays showed me that grammar nit-picking should be low on the priority list. When grammar mistakes put a giant roadblock between the reader and the author, they must be addressed. But, though a mixed up “it’s” and “its” is a pet peeve of just about everyone who knows the difference, the writer’s meaning is not rendered completely inaccessible because of this error. Dwelling on pedantic grammatical issues should be the absolute FINAL stage of the writing process. It just isn’t as big a deal as making sure your arguments are coherent and understandable.

In the end, I think grammar serves two functions. The first I already described; it facilitates communication. Good use of grammar use makes things easier to read and understand. The second function is this: grammar is a communication in itself. It tells the reader how to interpret the piece and how seriously the author takes his or her writing. Out of respect for my teachers and respect for the work I produce, I try to make sure what I turn in is error-free. By doing this, I’m telling them, “I take my work seriously, and I bothered to read through this with a fine-toothed comb. I want it to be clear that I care.” When I get, say, an email from someone with a bunch of grammar errors now, I understand what that person is telling me: not “I’m an idiot,” but, “I’m not worried about impressing you at this point in our relationship, and I don’t have anything to prove.” That, of course, can be either endearing or offensive, depending on the situation. That probably isn’t the message you want to send to a future employer. So it isn’t as if I have demoted grammar, in my mind. It just serves a very different purpose than it used to to me.

*If you’re not sure what “manfriend” is, simply know that I think women who call men “boys” after they (or their male peers) turn 18 have issues.

Plus, I think the term “manfriend” is awesome.

**NOTE–To any person who draws my attention to a grammar problem in this post, see Murphry’s Law. And, also, I both thank you and hate you.

Lucy Ferriss

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Amanda

Disclaimer: You are reading one of my early blog posts for a class and will have no context for what I’m about to say. For that, I apologize

I chose to explore the background and writing of Ms. Ferriss for a pretty silly-seeming reason. I just dug one of her titles, which including the phrase “misadventures of a reluctant debutante.” Midlist.org reveals that she is from the publishing world and feels she writes because she has to–the only reason, she claims, anyone other than genre writers would still be “left standing” in the business.

From “The Difficulty of Translation”:

She spoke the language passably. Once ao week or more she was invited to a dinner party at which others her age–bureaucrats, young lawyers, antique dealers–chatted excitedly around her and she soaked up their energy like a sponge going red with the excellent wine. Her thoughts felt simple to her on these occasions. The vocabulary at hand contained none of the shadings she was used to. In the empty, half-sober moments after she’d returned to her flat, she wondered sometimes if her party companions thought simple thoughts–but that was her American prejudice at work, filtering out whatever subtleties it couldn’t immediately process. She went to bed with the vapor of mystery. What did anyone think, really, and was language just a bowl to contain it? On rare occasions she missed the manager who brought her here, the one who had died on a hairpin term in the neighboring mountains. But she had scarcely known him, when you got down to it, and the years had smudged him into the gray of the city, until when she dreamed of him he was speaking in this other language, the one that made thoughts simple.”

http://lucyferriss.com/difficulty_of_translation.pdf

I liked this for a few reasons. One, I hate tired similes, to the point where if I see the words “like” or “as,” I cringe and pick up something nearby in preparation to throw it in anger. When I read the sponge-wine simile, I was very happy to put down this notebook I was about to throw. Horray for the Ferriss-recessitated simile!

Two, I love the abstract, mind-bending comparisons, which are scattered throughout her writing. There was no question in my mind, after reading this piece, that this woman is a writer. That may sound odd, but I don’t actually consider many people of the title “writer” very deserving of the title. She is creative and almost bizarre in her descriptions, but not awkward bizarre–awesome bizarre. It’s the kind of bizarre that is a reflection of how unpredictable and nonsensical human psychology actually is, and her writing seems to track how we strive to make connections. The explanation of simplifying language and trying to make sense of dreams (dreams which might be trying to make sense of experience, I might add) capture all of this complexities in a way I find fun and quirky.

Which brings me to three…the actual concepts behind her writing are so smart, so observant. The nuances of language and this process of converting thought to some system of communication–it IS very surreal, isn’t it?