I’ll take you out tonight. Throw away your phone, don’t worry about your boyfriend waking up alone. Oh oh oh ooooh. Oh oh oh ooooh.
My favorite part of writing out song lyrics (or reading them) are the OHs and the AHs. Hands down. They’re so awkward, which makes them my favorite.
I had a legit day off today. I did almost nothing…but I did something I’ve been trying to do for like a month now: I finished this book called Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose who’s a writer and a literature professor on the east coast. She seemed SO east coast, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense whatsoever. I mean that in the sense of who we picture when we think of writers/professors living in New York, surrounded by books in shelves and stacked on the old hardwood floors, and comfortable chairs for reading with soft blankets to wrap up inside when its cold, and coffee, and cigarettes. She wore horn-rimmed glasses long before they came back in fashion with us millenial hipsters, read the New Yorker, listened to NPR, had agents and editors and other authors over for wine, wore expensive slouchy sweaters, and wore the silver streaks in her hair with distinction…
…I mean THAT kind writer/professor from New York.
I just looked up actual photos of her, and I stand by my impression of her from her book 😛
Her book was about the joy of reading, really, but with a mind to what one can learn from reading the “greats.” It’s a refrain that I’ve heard repeated over and over in my early journey as a writer: if one wants to write, one must read. And then read some more, and then re-read to catch all the shit missed in the first reads.
The book was a lot of things for me. I bought paperback, and I realized I read much slower with a physical book in my hands. I wonder why that is. It was inspiring in that there was a lot of knowledge there to absorb; for example, I found it gd *fascinating* to read Chekhov writing about how he never EVER passed judgment on anything he was writing — not in terms of the writing itself, but what the writing was about; the characters, the themes, etc. He made himself simply describe what was happening, what was being felt, and what was being thought. I found that fffaaaasssssccciiinnnnaaatttttiiinnnggggg. I feel like I’ve broken that rule too much already; deciding what was right and wrong about a story (again, not the writing itself, but what is be *said*) or a character.
I also found it very overwhelming. There were several sections of the book that I had to read and then go back and re-read because I realized I didn’t know what Francine was actually saying, or what a quoted section of prose was exemplifying. It made me realize that reading is a skill, particularly critical reading…and that’s okay. That’s why I’m here, reading. And I need to read more of the “classics.” It will elevate my own writing.
I feel like in genre reading and writing, quite often, there’s an inherent distrust or skepticism with literature. It’s boring. It’s stuffy and full of itself. And, mostly, it’s HARD. That may be true…but maybe not. Probably not. In fact, I *know* it’s not. I’ve read Chekhov (his plays, not his prose, true) and he’s a goddamn genius. Seriously – his shit rocked my world it was so good; the kind of thing where you get it and it makes you feel connected to life, alive. Same thing with Shakespeare where I realized that it was written so precisely that if you were to just speak it the way it was supposed to be spoken, it would make you feel everything you needed to feel to act the scene like you were that character. There *is* a reason these works have been treasured and venerated for hundreds of years…they’re genius.
Francine’s book made me want to touch some of that genius. So…I will.
So much to read!
That’s all for tonight. Depeche Mode is taking me home, talking about “genius.” Reach out and touch faith.