"When writing loses touch with the
beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be
in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call
their dogs."
Garrison Keillor
If you ask a writer for advice on writing, most likely they
will tell you to read. And as someone who has always learned better by doing,
I’ve never quite understood that. If you want to be a better writer, isn’t the
first thing you should do is write?
There’s the age-old adage that practice makes perfect.
A few weeks back someone I hadn’t spoken to in quite some
time got in touch with me to ask me how he should go about starting a literary
project he had been thinking about for some time. I was surprised and humbled. Specifically,
he was unsure of what perspective to use to tell his story. Since it was
non-fiction, I suggested first person, though was not opposed to his idea of
third and cited instances where non-fiction had been written as fiction. Although
it is in first person, I referenced Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a novel that is a fictionalized
account of real-life happenings as documented in Thompson’s many letters.
Before I could finish my thought, though, he interrupted me and said he had
never read a book before in his life. I didn’t doubt it, knowing his background.
I told him his first step was that he needed to read a book. He said that
wouldn’t happen. I told him I couldn’t believe I said that.
I don’t read books. I own many. But a lot of them have never
been opened or have only had the first 50 or so pages read. When I was younger
I read a lot—including almost every book K.A. Applegate wrote (the best one was
the Everworld with the human
sacrifice). I honestly couldn’t tell you the last book I read in full that
wasn’t a poetry chapbook or a requirement for a college class, but if I had to
guess it was either The Kite Runner
or Nick Hornby’s young adult novel, Slam.
As a writer, I have been criticized by more than one person more than one time
for this. And while I get that reading is, in a sense, studying your craft, I
have never quite understood why some writers seem to think that reading is more
important than writing, even going so far as questioning your skill as a
writer, with or without having read your work, simply because you aren’t
constantly reading or if are reading, aren’t talking about what you are
reading. And that boggles me.
The best thing a writer can to do to become a better writer is write.
My freshman year of college I went to a Garrison Keillor
book signing. At the time, I hadn’t read any of his books, but I had fallen in
love with the film A Prairie Home
Companion and started listening to the radio show when I could. I didn’t
know if he would speak at the event or just sign books (I bought one when I got
there—Lake Wobegon 1956), but I knew
that if he did speak, he would undoubtedly have something good to say.
I can’t remember the main premise of the speech that he did
give. I can only remember three things. He had the entire group situated on the
second floor of Books and Co. in Beavercreek, OH sing “Amazing Grace”, the
lyrics rolling off the high ceilings of bookstore. As I stood in line waiting
my turn for an autograph (on both my newly acquired book and the DVD jacket for
my copy of A Prairie Home Companion),
my phone rang and it was this 1920s-swing-big band type of ring tone. I was
embarrassed and quickly tried to ignore the call from my dad. As I approach Mr.
Keillor, he asked me what that sound was and I thought for sure he was going to
yell at me for not having my phone turned off. Instead, he said he liked my
ringtone.
The thing that really stuck out to me, though, was his response to a young man, maybe 16 or 17, during a brief Q&A session. It was a question standard to these kinds of things, one I am sure you have heard or read many times in interviews: “What advice do you have for a young writer?” Mr. Keillor’s response was simple. Write about the people around you. He said that all of the inspiration you needed was around you—something Garrison Keillor clearly believes if you have ever read any of his books. I can still remember this line word-for-word: “For without you, their lives will go unrecorded.”
Life is full of characters and dialogue and plotlines. Every
story you will ever tell, whether it’s fiction, poetry, non-fiction, has
already been lived out for you. You just have to write it down.
The key to writing a good story isn’t reading a book—it’s
writing a good story. Write something that feels real and people will believe
it is real. You will never find that with your nose buried in a book, but
rather by living life. We communicate every day in one form or another: text
messages, phone calls, small talk with strangers, Facebook posts, Tweets,
dinner table conversation with the family, philosophical talks around a summer
bonfire. Writing is communication. It is taking an event—real or fake—and
putting it down on paper in a way that will elicit emotions in the reader and
enable them to develop a relationship with not just the characters but the
story as a whole.
People want to read things which they can believe to be
real, which they can identify with.
The summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school
I attended a week-long creative writing camp hosted by a nearby university. The
instructor echoed Mr. Keillor’s thoughts, stating that the best dialogue is
real dialogue. His suggestion was to go to the mall or a coffee shop or
somewhere else public with a notebook and write down the conversations you
hear. Get the slang, the colloquialisms, the dialect. This is where almost
every ounce of inspiration you will ever need for your creativity lies.
I buy heavily into Mr. Keillor’s advice, as well as that of
the instructor at the creative writing camp. And I firmly believe that the best
advice for a writer is to write. I’m not saying don’t read. Reading is
important. But I don’t think reading makes you a good writer. Writing makes you
a good writer. I don’t think it is okay for anyone to ever discredit or judge someone as
a writer simply because they’re not reading three books at a time.
As for the friend, whether he reads a book or not, I have no
doubt in my mind that he has the talent to create something that millions of
people will read and they will find inspiration in it. I think he has a better
chance than I do. I just hope he does it.
