Reading like a Writer: What Kind of Learner Are You?
January Totals
54,354 words (goal: 41,667 —12,687over)
41,740 fiction
12,614 nonfiction
(I’m counting “content” posts like these toward my monthly wordcount totals because they’re technically meant for publication, but I don’t feel super solid on that decision, so I’ll be splitting them up for transparency’s sake.)
I’m committing to 500k this year in earnest now—the amount of content posts I’m churning out puts me so far beyond where I thought I’d be. Functionally, I want to write 400k in fiction and an extra 100k in content. So far I’m on track for both.
Read this month (links lead to my bookstagram reviews where applicable):
THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET — Natasha Pulley
CITY OF MIRACLES — Robert Jackson Bennett
ENDURING LOVE — Ian McEwan
RIOT BABY — Tochi Onyebuchi
CARRIE — Stephen King
plus two nonfiction books about online marketing
I’m making a point of reading a lot of books—increasingly more as time goes on. Ideally, I’d like to get to a point where I’m knocking out two books a week. I don’t think I’m there; my output goals, for one thing, are too high. I have a lot of irons in the fire right now and I don’t particularly want to feel pressured to read more than I’m naturally inclined to do.
I have been doing some idle pop-scientific research on reading. Apparently it enables stress relief! I buy it. When I need to settle down I put my phone and computer out of reach, put on the kettle, and zone out with a book for an hour, and I usually feel better at the end of it.
There are obstacles to this. I’ve talked in previous OUT OF CHARACTERs about how I struggled in grad school and had to reconstitute many of my skills after a mental health crash. I count reading among these crashed habits. My comprehension became very bad basically overnight. My focus was yet worse. I struggled through and finished my degree—and then had the task of re-learning how to read for fun.
I learned to write and read again using fanfiction. Fic flexed the writing muscles over and over and over for many years, until composing and reaching for words became something it felt natural to do again. I wrote more than 80k in 2013—the year my mental health fell apart—out of sheer stubbornness. Then I steadily increased over time. 2019 was the most I wrote in one year at 489k; I expect to gently beat that this year.
I also, between fighting through history texts, read a shit-ton of fanfiction—almost exclusively, for a number of years. I read a few books in 2014 and 2015, which changed my life a little; then didn’t come back to reading novels for basically two years. My Goodreads goals tell the story:
Ah… glory.
I don’t do fandom nearly so much anymore, and on the occasion I still write fic, it’s mostly to flex muscles I don’t flex in my other projects—specifically short fiction, though I am flexing that in my profic more now. Reading is much the same. I rarely reach for fic to read anymore. In comparison, last year I finished with 46 books read, which was a happy total for me.
This year I aim to read 60. Like my writing goal, there are actually two goals at work here: I aim to read a novel a week, and then give myself wiggle room for the occasional nonfiction, vocationally useful book I’ll sit down and read in one sitting because I need to know the topic.
My bookstagram chronicles this process of weekly novels and encourages it. To post a review every Friday, I have to have read a book the week before. I had to ritualize writing to get good at it again; now I’m ritualizing reading the same way.
It’s not necessarily a process I recommend. I read like a writer—to a fault. I am always picking shit apart. The only books I read for head-empty escapism anymore—something I used to read fic for—are crime thrillers, a genre I am bad at writing and have no real desire to write. Now I’m aiming to take even more fun out of reading by making it a more explicit part of my job and social media strategy.
I do use reading to relax. I consider it a hobby, and I derive a lot of joy from it. I find it soothes and bolsters my soul. But I also weigh what I’m reading and why, and always, always have an eye to what I’m learning from it. I consider it my responsibility as a writer in multiple genres to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening in those genres and to read diversely.
I read for fun and relaxation. I also read for work. Often I am occupying these two states at the same time.
Shit’s become complicated.
(Some bookstagrammers take pictures like this like “just settling in to read!” and I’m like. Are you. I’m in full gremlin mode when I read but props to your scholastic approach.)
It does raise a question that I see folks asking from time to time: what is the difference in reading like a writer? Do you flip some kind of switch to do specifically this?
I think the answer is: only maybe.
I’m an analytical person by nature. On the other hand, if there’s one thing my grad degree in the humanities taught me that I use on a day-to-day basis in my career, it is reading analytically. In History, we called this “reading against the grain”: taking primary and secondary texts, reading deeply into their contexts and subtexts, reading for absences, looking at authorship, language, and structure, and seeing what they convey ideologically that the text doesn’t name. My alma mater placed a huge emphasis from first year in small tutorial classes specifically to encourage close reading of the text, and nothing’s prepared me better for being a writer. It’s one of the things I miss about no longer being in grad school: no longer having the opportunity to pick texts apart with colleagues.
I do it fine on my own, but the dialogue is limited when it’s only myself and the author, especially given the author doesn’t know I’m there. So much of reading analytically is a process of dialogue and conversation. Talking about a book with someone is probably one of the simplest ways to learn how to read like a writer just because you learn about writing by doing it. The conversation itself is always hugely worthwhile, but once you know what questions people ask about a book, you can also ask them yourself as you read.
It’s not the only way to do it. I spent four years teaching the same tutorial sessions that taught me to read analytically, and one thing I learned quickly was that the more formats you can distribute information to your students, the more likely they are to absorb it.
As a teacher, I made sure to write down (for visual learners) everything important I was saying on the board while I was saying it (for auditory learners). I strongly encouraged students to write down what I was writing instead of giving them handouts (for tactile/experiential learners). Then we talked about what we read, heard, and wrote (dialogue-based learning).
Visual, auditory, tactile, dialogue. You, like me, are probably better at some of these than others. I’m primarily a visual learner, but still learn best when I’m employing more than one learning style at once. Reading produces images in my mind: settings, characters, tableaux of events. On the other hand, I’ve learned that I can only listen to podcasts if I’m also doing something with both a visual and physical component—playing Stardew Valley, taking a walk, or doing the dishes.
Learning to read like a writer is just figuring out how best to learn from books. Play to your strengths as a learner. If you learn better by taking notes, take notes on your thoughts as you read, even in the margins. Write a passage down into a notebook for you to pick apart later. If you need to hear something aloud for it to take shape and a phrase stands out to you but you don’t know why, say it aloud.
Talk to people about it. Read it again.
And if all that sounds horrible—well, to hell with all of it. Read for fun. I don’t think “reading like a writer” needs to be a conscious process unless you are trying to develop specific skills. Odds are that you’re absorbing a ton about writing just by enjoying whatever it is you’re reading.
And if you are trying to develop specific skills? Apply questions about those same skills to the text you’re reading. How does an author break paragraphs and why? When do they used flowery language and when do they keep it straight?
I’m going back to my old buddy Stephen King on purpose this year—not because he’s the pinnacle of writing, or because I think I can learn much more from him than I already have. Just because I like his writing, for all its problems.
For all I read like a writer, sometimes I just want to read for fun. Sometimes it’s just nice to have macaroni and cheese for dinner. Reading doesn’t have to be work. It has benefits all its own.
Anyway… anyone want to start a reading group? (I’m joking.) (Or am I?)