Happy weekend, writers!
Today I want to talk about an oft-mentioned but
rarely considered (by me) concept: that of "reading like a writer."
I've spoken of it dozens of times before, both in these messages and to clients I work with one-on-one. "You must read like a
writer!" I'll command. "Your entire life -- nay, the fate of civilization -- depends on it!"
But I'm not sure I even do it myself. It's more like something I heard once that sounded really cool and made
sense, and so I adopted it as part of my own ethos.
And then riding in on his high horse of contrarianism comes ol' Charles Baxter, a writer I admire, and someone whose story "The Next Building I Plan to Bomb"
was a component of WriteByNight's very first writing workshop.
"Fiction doesn't typically yield up lessons or tools for me," Baxter said in a recent interview. "Great fiction isn't there to give you
lessons."
Then again, Stephen King once wrote that every book has a lesson.
So who's right, King or Baxter? Both? Neither?
Do you follow the "read like a writer dictum," or do you, in the words of Baxter, let great fiction take you "away to Storyland?"
So drop by and share your thoughts today. I will try to read them like a writer.
