How the hell does anyone owning a smartphone ever get any reading done?
You would do well to picture your typical reader as someone lying in a hammock on a soft summer day, with children playing loudly near by, a television set and a radio both going at once, a sound truck blaring past in the street, birds singing and dogs barking; this fellow has a cool drink and a pillow for his head, and all you have to do with your story is catch his attention and hold it.
—Shirley Jackson, “Notes for a Young Writer”
You would also do well to picture your typical reader as someone commuting on a crowded bus with a broken heater, nearby passengers sniffling and hacking, texts from their significant other plinking in and plinking in, a portly gentlemen next to them sitting too close, the driver cussing, the seat hard and the woman standing over them either reading along with them or just hoping to take their seat, and all you have to do with your story is catch their attention and hold it.
“It is terribly terribly easy to put down a story half-read and go on and do something else,” Jackson continues, and she’s right.
The same can be true for writing. In an attempt to write this, so far, I’ve:
Started it, deleted it, started it again, deleted it, gave up and ran some errands
Come back, written some, then had to turnover the laundry three times
Written for two more minutes before my tea finished
Twice I had to stop my dog from licking a small injury she has, and once more to start doodling out the comic you’re hopefully seeing above
I guess I get why those jackasses with typewriters work at Starbucks instead of home, but really, just like the hammock-reader of the 1950s, and the commute-reader of now, they’re just trying to stick band-aids on the same problem:
Reading is boring. Writing too.
Yes, I could be more disciplined and move upstairs where it’s quieter, I could shut off the wifi on my computer, drop my iPhone in the garbage disposal, give my dogs up for adoption, dump my fiancée and never wear laundered clothes again, but that’s life, and that’s writing, and writing and reading and life are all strands on the same spiderweb.
So instead, writing—and reading—have to engross.
Three Rules from Shirley Jackson
1. Trust the Reader
“You have the right to assume that the reader, however lazy, will exert some small intelligence while he is reading… you need only describe one gardener to imply that the castle is well-stocked with servants.”
2. Use the necessary, boring parts—the getting places, the doing chores—to shove the story forward.
“It was only one lousy block to walk, so she counted her footsteps anxiously.”
“During all of dinner the singing went on upstairs, and no one said a word.”
3. Descriptions should claw the reader onward
“Inanimate objects are best described in motion: ‘Because his cigarette lighter was platinum he had taken to smoking far too much.’ ”
Three Rules from Zach Edson
1. If it’s boring to write, it will be boring to read.
2. Less.
3. If not now, when?
That’s all I got for now. Back to laundry. Thanks for reading and please click like.