February 21, 2013

admiring the easy read

I just came back from the gym, where I went to buy food and read a book.  This is not the most intelligent behaviour for somebody who is doing a photo shoot for this good cause in the very near future.  Oh well. 

I’m happy I took some time to read.  I’m reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and I had one of those fleeting moments when I’m enjoying a book and I think ALL books should be just like the one I’m holding.  It’s funny and sad and smart and it just flies by.  I think, I want to write a book that just flies by. 

But so far, I don’t think this has been my style in anything I’ve published.  And I might be wrong or misremembering things…it’s almost certain, anyhow, that the way I feel when reading through one of my own manuscripts is not the same way anybody else would feel.  I’ll read something and get tripped up on whatever else I know went into a particular sentence (what I was thinking about when I wrote it, or that tricky clause I took out of it, or the word I wanted to use but couldn’t manage), while someone else finds it all wonderfully lucid.  Or at other times (and this is by far the more common pitfall in writing), I know exactly what I’m trying to say and I breeze through it all without a problem, congratulating myself on my clarity while readers are stuck trying to follow my analogies from point A to point B.  

It would be nice to write something as straightforward as talking or thinking, so there is nothing for a reader to bump up against and get shaken out of the spell.  That’s something I’d like to do. 

But I still appreciate other styles of writing!  I enjoy and admire difficult books as well as straightforward ones, and I guess I’m saying I’d like to write lots of books and lots of different kinds of books, if that turns out to be possible.  


Whew.

If you haven’t yet, and you’re behind on your internet reading, you should check out the wonderful LitBits gathered over at Bella’s Bookshelves

On a less literary note, check out this hilarious Get the Look over at The Hairpin.

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