April 5, 2007

Great Writers Read Great Writers

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:42 am

Once Upon a Time

If I asked you to name a great writer, who might it be? And if I asked you to name more than one, would all of them, any of them, have gone to a university?

Abraham Lincoln, a self-educated man, wrote the Gettysburg Address.

Ayn Rand left the USSR in 1926 — her formal education was over. She came to the U.S., took odd jobs in Hollywood to support herself. Ayn Rand wrote The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged.

Truman Capote ended his formal education at age 17. He wrote In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

All of these great writers learned to write by reading.

That’s how writers learned through history. Writers learned to write before there were oficial writing teachers. What did they get?

They got the music and the structure of the language.
They got a sense of story.
They learned to put words together to make meaning.

Oh sure, they got much more. Every word they read taught them something about their writing.

Do you read like a writer? What would a writer of your sort be reading? How might a writer read in a different manner? Is reading blogs enough?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed under Successful Blog, Writing | 32 Comments »

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32 Comments to “Great Writers Read Great Writers”

April 5th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Gaizabonts said
The stories that they would write, form while they read – they are mentally writing down their own stories as they read; one way of how I think writers read. Great writers are great visualisers too – they can ‘see’ the picture as they read.

And, there is much more to read than just blogs – from the calorie information on a chocolate bar to the newspaper and to the Treatise of Human nature (and everything in between)
April 5th, 2007 at 8:19 am
ME Strauss said
Hi Gaizabonts!
Welcome! Great writers pay attention to both structure and expression. They see as they write. They also listen.

I’m with you, Gaizabonts,we have to see all of the print in our environment and look for ways that it teaches to read and write more flexibly.

You’re not a stranger here anymore.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work said
I was a writing major in college, so I got exposed to some great writers; some from ages past, some contemporary.

When I read this post, the first one that lept into my head was Jim Harrison â€” his writing captivates me. (He wrote the original novellas that movies like “Legends of the Fall” and “Revenge” were made from.)

And when you talk about “reading like a writer” â€” wow, that took me back. I used to (still do, actually) read with two minds; one focused on enjoying the content, and the other trying to understand how they did what they did.

These days, I don’t get much fiction in…

Six weeks or so ago, I picked up Spunk & Bite, by Arthur Plotnik. Great book on writing, especially about how to get off the hamster wheel of writing monotonous prose.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Carolyn Manning said
My favorites are who I consider the classics: Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Lawrence, Shakespeare, me, and you

Then, there are Vonnegut, Asimov, and Heinlein.

I feel foolish admitting that I didn’t know Capote wrote Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I was about 17 when I read In Cold Blood; at that age, it wasn’t the best introduction to his work.

As for any of them having had big-time formal education, probably not. But each of them knew how to use the language to say what they wanted to say.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Mark Goodyear said
They would read good writing. Period. That includes good story telling of all kinds, good sentences of all kinds.

The important thing is to keep reading. That has been hard for me to learn. After I got an MA in English literature, I had to give myself permission to put books down. If a book hasn’t grabbed hold of me by the third night of reading, I’m done. I may return to it later, but I’m not going to slug through some book on compulsion.

There are too many good books in the world, to suffer through mediocre books. The trick is finding the good books. But with the internet that is easier than ever.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Mark Goodyear said
I also read a TON of magazines: Wired, National Geographic, The Week, US News and World Report, Time, Newsweek, Print (sometimes), New York Times Magazine, Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, Rolling Stone, and a bunch more. My friends and family exchange magazines when we are done.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:19 am
ME Strauss said
Hi Carolyn!
It’s important that we all know that the apprenticeship part of writing is a critical piece of what makes a writer, not the diploma or the blessing of some teacher — not the audience. It’s the growing. It’s the fact that we look hard as we read to see what’s happening with the words as well as with the meaning.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:21 am
ME Strauss said
Hi Mark,
Exactly Mark, Reading only blogs cuts out so many sources of both inspiration and writing sytles and writing expertise. There are great writers in the blogosphere — no doubt about that. There are also great thinkers in every small town. But if you want to learn all you can you find every available source.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:56 am
William Tully said
1. why are ‘great writers’ typically associated with fictional stories?
2. is writing not a form of art left to the eye of the beholder?

I’m told that Hemingway is a great writer… What about Orson Scott Card, Bill Bryson, or even the one writing this blog or this comment?

I agree that we (as writers) should be reading great writers, yet I completely disagree at the same time. For example, I have a very unique style of writting… The style is simply a reflection of how I speak and teach. Same pauses, inflections, and YELLING… sometimes.. Yet the last thing on my list is to sit down and read some Shakespeare, simply because the style is absolutely nothing I can relate to.

Douglas Adams (Last Chance To See) is perhaps the single book with a writing style that I can COMPLETELY relate to and respect. Now, is he a great writer? Certain circles, he is a respected author. This book? Relatively unknown. Bill Bryson is another author, who in my opinion, is absolutely brilliant!

I guess I’m not entirely sold on reading great writers helps with great writing. I think having a grasp of your chosen language is key, and just simply reading is key. I would sooner read something by a great THINKER than a great writer…

(sorry for the blog post there, got a bit carried away..)
April 5th, 2007 at 10:11 am
ME Strauss said
Hi Tully,
We read the great writers to see how they do it — both fiction and nonfiction ysd indeed. Then we take from them what work for us, internalize it into our style. Isn’t that the same as with any creative art?

Learn the technique and the style of the masters in order to gain flexibility and fluency within the media and then claim it, hame it, makie it our own?

I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive — I listen to invormation from many sources to test my ideas every time, but I balance and weigh the information based on the source and its applicability to the outcome I’m going for.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Charles Bricman said
I’m writing in French and I completely agree with you, Liz: one can’t become a good writer if he doesn’t (didn’t) read great writers – for his or her pleasure! My own are different of course, they are the French classics (I include “popular” authors like A. Dumas or G. Simenon). But I also love many others, the great Russians, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Perutz, Auster… And no, blogs and magazines aren’t sufficient. For sure. But as a former journalist, I discovered fantastic pieces in American “New Journalism” (Rolling Stone…)
April 5th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Mark Goodyear said
Tully, I understand exactly what you mean. I have little patience with the literary cannon. If someone tells me I’m supposed to like Dickens because he is a “great” writer, that makes me feel stupid. I just don’t like Dickens.

Nor do I like The Scarlet Letter. BLEECCHHHH. It stinks. I’ve never liked it, and I finally stopped teaching it to my students because I thought it was cruel and unusual.

So on the one hand–great writing is anything that keeps me reading and thinking. (That second part is an important proviso).

But I have to be careful not to dismiss the writers that have consistently been an inspiration across decades and generations and centuries.

Like Liz said, what these people understand is the craft of a good sentence. And a good paragraph. That’s why Hemingway is so important. I feel ambivalent about a lot of his work–but all of it has such incredible streamlined prose. The content may not hook me, but that prose is a technique I want to learn.

In my opinion, the best new book with powerful prose every blogger must read is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

As to why we value fiction over non. People just love a good story. They always will.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Mark Goodyear said
Whew. That was a long comment. Sorry ’bout that Liz. I should have posted on my blog and linked back.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Rick Cockrum said
I almost never read something the first time like a writer. I read it for what it has to say. The next time I read (and if I liked it, there’s always a next time), I try to understand what they did and how they did it.

Like others here, some authors that are classed as great writers I either just don’t like, or writing styles have changed so much that they don’t sound right. Some are too musical. Shakespeare, for example, is aural. I get lost when I just try to read his work. On the other hand, the music of things like part s of the Bible, some of the Hindu religious books, or the ancient Greeks draws you in.

Reading blogs is never enough. Books, stories, non-fiction articles, poetry are all necessary.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Whitney said
No, reading blogs is NOT enough. However, I know a few people who claim they “started reading again” as a result of reading blogs — they encountered so many book recommendations (largely non-fiction) that they felt compelled to read the books to find out what the buzz was about.

Nor do I think that great writers only come from the literary arena (fiction, stories, poetry, plays, essays). Bill Bryson, Simon Winchester, David Halberstam, and Jane Goodall all write compelling non-fiction.

Nor do I think that “great writers” are solely about longevity and standing the test of time (see: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Alcott, Dreiser, Dickens, Tolstoy, etc.). “Great writers” can be people who do a great job of writing about their chosen topic. I’ve read Godin, Stelzner, and Kawasaki because I want to learn from them how to “write short” effectively (on the day they handed out virtues, I missed out on brevity because I went back for seconds on chutzpah). I read Liz Strauss and Curt Rosengren daily, and have read Sarah Ban Breatnach and Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, because their passion, enthusiasm and pure heart for their respective subject matters is evident, contagious, noteworthy.

At the end of the day, it’s about what twirls your beanie, what resonates with you, what sticks with you when you sit down and write your own words. If you read a wide array of material, you’re just as likely to learn how to write a great opening line for your novel from one of the copywriting masters as you are from a literary master.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am
James said
I have always read as a reader. For the enjoyment of it. Still, I cannot see how the writing of a favorite writer would not affect the way a reader writes (does that make sense?).
Someone above mentioned Douglas Adams. I have never heard mentioned in education, yet I cannot name a better example of the descriptive writing they were always asking for in school. Of course, maybe I just still have a lot of reading to do.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:14 am
ME Strauss said
Hi Charles!
I agree. The more writers and writing styles that we read, the more we understand how to use the language — to weild it. Another language helps us understand how the parts of our own language works.

We learn language so young that we often don’t realize that there are ways to craft it to make effects and paint images. If we study how a variety of dancers move we walk with more grace.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Whitney said
Mark Goodyear: You feel about “The Scarlet Letter” the way I feel about “The Red Badge of Courage.” I had to read that book once in high school English, and THREE times in college. As a result, I won’t touch any other books written by Stephen Crane, which is a shame.

A writing major in college, I intentionally picked literature courses that worked outside the canon: Medieval Lit, Southern Women Writers, a special faculty-developed study in Virginia Woolf…stuff along those lines. I love reading Tolstoy, but if I’d had to read him for a literature course and pick apart the books like those courses made us do, I probably would have come to dislike his books.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:36 am
William Tully said
“on the day they handed out virtues, I missed out on brevity because I went back for seconds on chutzpah” – HA! Brilliant!

College english… Ok, the type of place one would EXPECT to be enlightened with great writers whether you like them or not, yes? A little exposure for your own well being, if you will… … Lucky for me, we got “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe! *groan*
April 5th, 2007 at 11:39 am
John Wesley said
I completely agree. In fact, actually wrote a post about writing earlier this week and the need to read great writers was one of the main points.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Lisa said
Hi Liz and all,

Boy, it’s blogger synchronicity day. I wrote about “great” writing today too.

What popped me out of my chair, Liz, is your comment about not writing for the audience, and this veers quite away from your original question, but…

Storytelling, like theatre, requires an audience to be complete. I feel the same way about art. It’s a painting when someone else sees it. I don’t mean that it’s not good, or the experience of creating isn’t worthy without an audience. It’s like Stanislavsky’s famous line, “love art in yourself, not yourself in art.”

I don’t think we should be writing FOR an audience, to gain approval or something, but I am repulsed by self serving writers who turn over words in their graves to be cute, hip or literary.

Blogging is wonderful for conversations like these, and because they keep you writing. And writing. And for me, bit by bit, I’ve found my voice, or more accurately, a lot of voices that serve the medium, my audience, and me all at the same time. But it would be called something else if I did it by and for myself alone.

Of course these posts are long winded, we’re all writers fahgadsakes.

L
April 5th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Easton Ellsworth said
Yes! Yet another “why hasn’t anybody said this in a long time” post from you, Liz.

A HUGE key to blogging success – and also to writing success and life success – is being able to read and drink in knowledge effectively. And along with that, developing a keen sense of what constitutes good or bad writing.
April 5th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
ME Strauss said
Wow! I’ve been following this conversation so closely, but I didn’t dare interrupt it. The thoughts were happening seemed too important for me to step in from nowhere to move them along. You had your own momentum.

From the time we are kids we separate reading in school from reading at home. That’s such a sadness. School seem to kill books for us. I did my bes6 to make that not happen.

If we could crawl inside the writing of great writers the way we can sometimes crawl inside the thinking of great thinkers. Great wrieint would come so naturally. We would automatcially understand why things in serial work best in threes, why there can’t be an A without a B, and how to make an ending satisfying to readers.

Reading great writers often and for a long time is like behing surrounded with great music, you cannot help but take in something at the intuitive level of detail.

Thanks what I think, no, no, that’s what I know and believe.
April 5th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Ms. Q said
1) Do you read like a writer?

I am not sure. I think I start a book as a reader and if something captures me, I wonder WHY and then I begin reading the book as a writer.

2)What would a writer of your sort be reading?

I read all sorts of books (I just wrote 2 posts related to writing!) because I don’t want to get stuck in a reading rut. I tend to like murder mysteries but have no desire to write one. If I were to write a fictional book (scary!) I would probably try my hand at the so-called Chick-Lit genre, which I also read.

3) How might a writer read in a different manner?

I think I pay more attention to words, rhythm and pacing than a reader. For example, I was reading “The Shipping News” by E. Annie Proulx and I was wondering how it was that I felt edgy and off-kilter when I started the book and then when the character moved to another country (can’t recall the details) I began to relax?

I then noticed the words she chose, how they created a soothing rhythm which echoed the changes within the protagonist. Wow!

4) Is reading blogs enough?

Nope!

I like Mark Goodyear’s comment: “So on the one handâ€“great writing is anything that keeps me reading and thinking. (That second part is an important proviso).”

For my part, I think great writing is one that a reader can connect to. For example, I love the writing of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I don’t get the impression that people think they are great writers. In my view, I think they are expert storytellers.

I know there are all sorts of writing (technical, educational, news) but what got me interested in writing was just as you started your post…once upon a time. I want to be told a story and my hope is that at some level, I tell my readers a story.
April 5th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Shawna R. B. Atteberry said
I read a little bit of everything on both the internet, books, and magazines. You can get ideas from everywhere plus you never know when you’re going to stumble along something to help out a project you’re currently working on. I read somewhere that if you’re a writer, you’re a reader. They weave in and out of each other.
April 5th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
ME Strauss said
Hi Ms.Q,
Welcome!
Thank you for the wonderful comment that so details exactly how the reader reads differently than the writer does. You should pick that up and make a blog post of it. It is truly wonderful!

You are not a stranger here anymore!
April 5th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
ME Strauss said
Hi Shawna,
I, too, read all things that I can — even the magazine where I get my hair done! Ideas and a new take on a way that the language work is waiting ou there in every sentence. But books are still my favorite places to look for the strcutre and sound of teh language.
April 6th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Dawud Miracle said
I don’t think I read like a writer, myself. I read for content and often synthesize what I’m reading with other knowledge I have. I think I’m often looking for connections between things – without rediculously forcing them.

I also don’t think reading blogs is enough. Reading great literature is so feeding to the soul.
April 6th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
ME Strauss said
Hi Dawud,
Taking a moment to see how a writer structured what he or she wrote can be so enlightening and make such a difference in our own writing. Reading to see — How that was done is a curous writer’s way of learning technique? You should give it a try. I’d bet you’d be good at it. It’s like listening to the music of the language when someone reads aloud.
April 7th, 2007 at 1:40 am
daveolson.ca - the developing blog! » Balancing your Web 2.0 life with real life is tough! said
[...] Improved writing skills. Simply writing posts everyday is going to improve your writing. Add to that the comments from readers and insights like how to use proper punctuation, reading great writers and writing with your audience in mind. [...]
April 9th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Dawud Miracle said
Liz, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:36 am
christine said
hi all. i’m from romania and i saw what you people wrote down here. excuse me if i don’t write correctly but i’m not that god at english. i wantwd to say that you are doing a good job with this blog and i hope you keep it like this. i enjoyed reading your comments. kiss you all

Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You're only a stranger once.

April 5, 2007

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