How To Read Like a Writer

            

     After reading this article, I too came to realize that all writing does in fact consist of a series of choices. Mike strongly opens the article with a bold stance that I couldn’t agree with more. Of how fascinating it is if you think about it how authors are able to pull words together to make phrases, which those phrases end up making an entire novel.

    For me, reading never came easy and it still doesn’t. But I feel as though the fact that I hate watching movies without subtitles must say something. I think for me I love to visualize things as well read them to have a more concrete and absolute understanding of the material. This class especially, never sparked my interest because of all of the reading and writer. The two subjects I hate most in the entire world.

    I find it interesting how the author states that, “When you Read Like a Writer you work to identity some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing” (pg. 72).  He continues to state that the whole idea behind that is to examine what you read while directly looking at the writing techniques so you can see if you would like to adopt the same style writing. That I can completely relate to, because the very few books that I have read, the one that stood out to me the most was one that was written as if it were a casual conversation. I believe it was the Judy Blume books I read in middle school. The way Judy Blume would casually, yet simply talk about the hardships as a teen growing up made it comfortable for me to read and to better understand. That was a writing technique that I was looking to adopt, yet was halted when going to my college preparatory high school. Writing for me personally was always very strict and expected to be a certain way. Thus explains why I never really enjoyed it. My theory is that, those people who grew up writing in diaries were the ones who enjoyed writing and felt comfortable with it. I was definitely not one of those people.

    Just as Mike states, “You are already an author, and that means you have a built-in advantage when reading like a writer/ All previous writing experiences- inside the classroom and out- can contribute to your success with RLW” (pg. 75). For me, Mike is a positive reinforce that anyone is an author, if you have written anything maybe even just a sentence you are a writer. That right there gives me hope for improvement and future success.