Learning to read: Part 4
I believed writing school had “it” and that by my going to writing school, “it” would be transferred to me. I thought school would make me a writer, and then thought school had failed me when it did not. But how contradictory this is! For of course at the same time that I craved the transformation from without, I would have been alarmed by any attempt to transform me, since in fact I wanted what most of us want: not to become someone else, but to find endorsement for who we already are; not to be told, “This is how to write,” but to be told, “Yes, you are writing.”
—Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark
Re-introducing our newsletter
You’ve been writing forever… but no one’s ever seen it. You enjoy writing for work… but you’ve always wanted to write for yourself. You have a book inside you… but it’s only made it out in notes and voice memos. You have ideas all the time… but never a finished piece. You produce pages and pages… but can’t bring yourself to organize or edit. You think about your writing all the time… but rarely put down any words.
This newsletter is for all of you who need to be reminded—no matter how long it’s been, no matter where or whether you ever publish, no matter your pace or your output, no matter how much you’ve hidden your creative self in the mirror or from the world, no matter how much you may struggle to value your own words, and when you can’t bear to say it to yourself… you are a writer.
I have said this into many doubting faces, both in my work as a coach and editor, and to so many writer friends over the years. More than any advice on writing technique, process, or practice, this is the most powerful piece of writing guidance you could ever receive—and you can and must give it to yourself, too. It’s a declaration of a fact that no one needs to determine but you, no one has to believe but you, and no one can ever take away from you. There is no amount or kind of achievement that will make you feel this truth in your self. You have to just believe, and in believing, be. And by being, you can finally relax into what it is to do.
Nothing else about this newsletter will change—you’re still getting a creative writing prompt every other Tuesday; and every other Tuesday and an essay or guide to some element of the practice, process, craft, and life of writing. (I hope you’ll subscribe if you aren’t already!) I have more announcements in January along these lines, I’m really excited to share. But I didn’t want to wait any longer to start sending the main message and our mission to your inbox regularly: you are a writer. And you need nothing else but knowing that to make it so.
Practice, Process, Craft is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“Learning to read” additions
There is just so much to say about reading it’s been almost painful to publish so little—even though it’s been thousands and thousands of words! We will be learning to read critically as editors (“first readers”) beginning in January, and moving on (at least for now) from the “learning to read” as lovers of books and humanity series. But, I wanted to add a few more thoughts about how to source new books to read and some other ideas that I don’t want to miss. Just running through these thoughts—I even numbered them for helpful numbering!
I was too dismissive of sourcing reading lists online—there are many incredible people who have taken a ton of time and spent a lot of effort to really curate reading lists and reading guides, some created by educators, individuals, or organizations committed to helping people learn about new topics or navigate difficult life experiences. For example, my incredible client-turned-great-friend Jenny shared a grief reading list with me created by an organization she’s been involved in, The Dinner Party. This list was life-saving to me after a devastating and shocking loss this year. I would not have had the strength to go into an IRL bookstore to inquire about ‘grief books’—no way! So I wanted to highlight the incredible utility and hard word of people who have put together such lists—social justice reading lists, prison abolition reading lists, radical pedagogies reading lists, sci-fi-for-the-planet reading lists, literary historical fiction reading lists, these are just some of the incredible stuff you can find out there on the worldwide web. Just make sure these are the lists you surface when searching online, and not algorithmically generated ones, rankings of ‘best’ anything, or ones that are actually ads for new books.
While I maintain my caution against any book rankings whatsoever, learning about the “best books” determined by people you love, admire, respect, and find inspiring, is a great direction! Do some fun research! Did an author you like give a Paris Review interview where they talked about their favorite books and influences? What about people you know? Ask your friends, family members, colleagues—it’s also a great way to get to know people better you don’t know well!
One idea it to ask your closest friends and family what the “most important book is” to them and then make an effort to read some of those books—it can be a great way to connect with those people and to learn something about them.
Why should nonfiction writers read fiction? Why should nonfiction writers read poetry? To see the world in new ways and understand it as new, to see from new perspectives, to see some of the infinite ways we have broken patterns to create art, to see how patterns may be broken still. To learn what we like in voice, tone, and style. To build empathy. To understand ourselves and our own uniqueness more and better. To have fun and get more of life down our brain-gullets. Straight to the moon!
When I wrote about reading what you like, I neglected to mention—if you don’t like something, it’s ok to stop reading it! This can be really liberating—if the style isn’t carrying you, if the structure is drawn-out, if the voice is grating, just stop. This is great learning if you inquire to yourself what you don’t like, and what it feels like to not like. What happens in my body when I read something I don’t enjoy? Am I upset by something, or just bored? Why am I bored? You may have something important to learn about your own style and what you appreciate in other’s writing. As long as you’re not afraid of the material, or intimidated by the writing, it’s ok to not like things. Just remember—it might be the timing that’s wrong, not you or the book. It took me fifteen years after first trying Virginia Woolf to try again—what if I has assumed it was her I would forever dislike? Heaven forfend such a world as would be my woe!
Learning to read for inspiration is so key, I will definitely return to this idea in a future post as I’ve mentioned it a few times in this newsletter but never in depth—for now, as you are learning to read, please keep track of what inspires you to write. Not just what you like, or what feels like “really good writing.” But the voices that make you feel like you want to join them in chorus and maybe emerge into your own solo as they hold up the harmony. These are your companions in writing. Keep them close and together.
Remember to engage the book at different levels. How deeply you see the words in yourself will change—there are levels inside at which we see. I might first see the shape and movement of the words; then I might see the color of some, the texture of others, and a picture may emerge inside me. I can see from my outside eyes and from my inner imagination, and they are connected but not the same. I provide so much as a reader—though I am relaxed, this is not a passive act. And that is where the crux of reading is—the co-creation the reader embarks on with the writer, a journey always taken together.
When it comes to participating in your reading, remember to practice relaxation through ritual (container) and slowness—letting outside thoughts go and embracing the embodied experience of reading gives us easier access to our imaginations, which are related to memory and live in our limbic brain, not the problem-solving brain that seeks to overwrite the imagination with something called reason. Relax and let go into the experience of co-creation. Of primary importance? Physical comfort.
Participation can also mean getting physical with your reading in other ways—taking notes in the margins or underlining lines you like the sound of or some point you don’t want to forget. Working to dialogue with the reading in the margin is definitely worth practicing if you’ve never read this way before. Don’t overthink it, just hold a pencil and make a little mark when it occurs to you to mark something. A system of marks is likely to emerge naturally as you learn to hear your own questions pinging in your head.
Try it with a stranger or a neighbor or a friend: notice their eyes as they're putting something together, notice their movements, ask these questions to yourself—how do they move? what is their mood? how can I tell? These aren’t distractions—if you are taking your time as with reading, there is enough time to notice and see, and be-with. In fact these observations are a way of being-with. Only when we are rushing through the page and through every interaction and experience do we lack the time to notice and see. Then we are not reading at all and so have lost the total chance to relate.
Remember, try reading in your head with the cadence of speech—this is slow enough. Reading to yourself in your head can be practiced as an experience of helpful distancing within the self, too—you are giving your self an experience, instead of forcing yourself to do something. And the pleasure of pure entertainment will further help you relax into the experience of learning.
Can “reading” include listening to an audiobook? Yes, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! Listening is reading, with different participation from the reader. But don’t listen to a bot-recited book, please! Human voices only. Listening to a bot, it is not reading, because there is no relating. Do listen to books that are well-produced and read by actual professional audiobook performers or professional actors. I will opt for audiobooks when I want to read a memoir that’s recorded by the author—hearing the person tell us about their life in their own voice is really special. And guess what skills you’re developing by doing this? All our talk about rhythm and hearing the music of your own writing will be aided by listening to books. You will hear feeling in ways you might need to practice in your silent self-reading. Also, it’s one of life’s great pleasures to be read to. It’s not the same as sitting in a chair and reading silently, it’s a differently experience, one that also has great value to our work as writers and worth to our life experience.
I felt a little bad dismissing your guilt about buying cheap books on Amazon. But, then I realized that I can and want to encourage you to think more deeply about this part too. Guilt is often something I get into very deeply with clients, whether it's guilt around commitment to writing progress, or guilt that they feel about something from the past that's become a block in their writing, or guilt about taking up space in the world, that we want to process (through writing) and unblock. I want to hear your guilt, I want you to share your guilt with me, I'm actually really good at helping you work through it and that's a big part of what we use writing to do in my practice! But, what I said about feeling guilty shopping from Amazon, that doesn’t need any further discussion. It’s a waste of processing power to work through your guilt in this case—as my wise and beautiful friend Sarah once said, “Sometimes you can just do things differently.”
Fever Dream Book List
Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?
No, I admit without shame to all my reading pleasures, past and present.
—Annie Ernaux, interviewed by the New York Times
Rankings are stupid, unless the person doing the ranking says, “This is 100% subjective and personal!”
I have given this reading list no thought. I entered a trance state and whatever book surfaced trailing memory made it in. It is an incredibly partial list forever incomplete. The Fever Dream Book List is my offering and my prompt to you—begin your own and don’t mind sharing it!
Unmissable audiobook listening experience: Trevor Noah reading his memoir Born a Crime. He’s an amazing performer and does all the languages!
Most important book of poetry to me: Of Being Numerous by George Oppen (So small a picture, / A spot of light on the curb, it cannot demean us / / I too am in love down there with the streets / And the square slabs of pavement — / / To talk of the house and the neighborhood and the docks / And it is not ‘art’.)
Best time I’ve had in a group-reading experience: Participating in a 24-hour Moby-Dick read-a-thon.
Most memorable crying experience with a book: Past midnight at the all-night library in college (they shot an Urban Outfitters campaign there), reading Paradise Lost in front of the fire. That book is just a love story!
Scariest experience reading a book: The broom scene in Infinite Jest. I had to stuff it under a pillow and run around the block.
Book that I wish existed: A history of the ‘70s poetry scene in Arkansas.
The book that helped me through one of the most difficult times of my life: All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Books that significantly moved me toward greater mental tranquility: Chatter by Ethan Cross; Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise by Justin Talbot and Leigh Marz
My favorite books about writing: How To Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alex Chee; Draft No. 4 by John McPhee; Writing Past Dark by Bonnie Friedman.
Most important physical copy of a book: My grandfather’s nearly-earth-again edition of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. The inscription was destroyed in a roof leak last year, but the ink he used to write with still shows.
A play that changed everything when I read it in book form: The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard
Best book I never would have found or read without a personal recommendation: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (If you want an incredible freaky read, this is it! This book is insane and disturbing… and is kind of about writing?! 😂)
Favorite genre-bending books I highly recommend to all nonfiction writers: Lying by Lauren Slater; In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado
Best used-bookstore find: Ezra Pound-annotated manuscript of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland (at Gray Matter books off Route 9 between Northampton and Amherst in Western Massachusetts)
Best experience getting a book: I was waiting tables the night the stunning poet Camille T. Dungy came in—I told her I loved her work but couldn’t make it to her reading that night because I was working. She returned later to deliver me a signed copy of her recent book!
A book the mere knowledge of reminds me how wonderful it is to get to be alive on this planet which is the right place for love: Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
The book I read while attending a Spice World-themed party when I was 7: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
American classic you actually should try: Grapes of Wrath (This book is astounding and transformative for those who take the time to be with it. You will learn so much about writing, too. Winter is a great time to read this long book!)
The book to understand me more: I might tell you one day if I decide I want this!
Important nonfiction from this year: Strangers to Ourselves, Rachel Aviv
Favorite book with animals: Amy Hempel, Sing to It
The book that makes me want to write: Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison
Thanks, writers! Yes, I suggest starting your own Fever Dream Book List this week, start to populate it not with the ‘best’ books you can think of, but the books tied to memory like the ribbons of a kite—which add fun and flair as well as stability and direction to the flight of your life.
I love you all.
