Eneh Akpan Writes: Reading (process)

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Grounds to 'Read With a Pencil Close By'

Here are a handful of grounds to “Read with a pencil close by.” I found out it is still one of the best advices ever given to writers or students of the printed text.

Mark Phrases/Sentences & Paragraphs

When a phrase or paragraph catches my eye and sparks up a desire for complemental musing, I mark it using a colored pen/pencil or highlighter. I feel much better having a textual landmark around it, knowing it will arouse zeal whenever I spot it.

A Sign of Commitment

I pick up a fiction/nonfiction text then grab for a colored pencil or highlighter and I feel a sense of commitment. The pen/pencil informs every nerve in my body that I mean business. I aint just doing this for fun, I intend to come off the reading project with a lesson and some learned.

Recall Entire Textual Matter

It’s a lot more easy to call up words from memory if you underline/mark them when you read. I do that often and when my mind coughs up those peculiar sentences they usually appear on the wall of my subconscious as images. I visualize the interesting set of words hemmed in by my scrawls before the title of the book essentially floats to the surface.

Spot Peculiar Phrases/Sentences/Paragraphs

I find I can navigate the text with ease when I circle or box words that chase my fancy. For me, it’s become less stressful identifying a line or box in the middle of a page, to find the sentence or phrase it guards. I can pick out these phrases during my research period. The lines and symbols seem to beg for my attention.

Lookout for Peculiar Twists

Having a highlighter close by where I can reach it and tag a phrase keeps my faculty amped up and on the lookout for expressions full of shades of meaning. The search for inspired language morphs into a conscious, energetic process and for somebody out to learn a new thing that’s a lot.

That’s all folks. I guess you know what you need for your next reading exercise besides the text, that is.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan

Thursday, October 4, 2012

5 Tips on Reading Like a Writer

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I have something for you. Especially, if you’re a writer but I guess any fervid reader might learn a few tricks from this post.

There is a world of difference between reading (despite the intensity of the reader) and reading like a writer. I know a lot of writers feel the same way, too. The tips which follow are not all there is about reading like a writer but they’ll suffice for now. For me, more than for you.

1. Live Inside the Story

This is an attempt to see the reader through your eyes as well as your senses. You’re learning how the reader is influenced by the printed page. Don’t act it. Really live in the pages and allow the words touch and move you until you hear the author’s pulse as the words pour through the windows of your eyes into your heart. Take the words through the follicles in your body.

2. Read with a Pencil Close By

If ‘Read a lot’ is the first part of the writer’s creed (The second part being Write a lot.), the writer ought to regard books as a student treats his/her textbooks. Underline words and phrases, which strike you as peculiar. Put a square around special words. Use curly brackets, asterisks, question marks, exclamation marks, any symbols that might aid sharp and brilliant recall in time of need.

The purpose of marking phrases or whole sentences and paragraphs is to help you find the appropriate words/phrases or paragraph during your writing period. It’s easy to identify a line or box standing in the middle of a page, to find the sentence it guards. Use highlighters and colored pencils/pen. Any word that kicks up your interest should be marked for further escapades.

3. Read between the Lines

Look beyond the obvious. Strip the words of contextual and metaphorical context and dig straight for the meat.’

Read guided by the simple but forceful truth: you are a writer. Make the words on the page appeal to you; listen to the author’s heartbeat as he speaks to you. Weigh each word on the scale of your emotion as the meaning slides home with an audible thump.

4. Add Your Own Words

Here’s one important reason you should have a pen or pencil beside you when you read.

Reading is a stimuli for creativity. A word, a phrase, an expression could spark a bust of inspiration and you would want to mark your place with… words. No other spot can serve that need like the space beside the words that initiated the inspiration.

Add your words to the ones already on the page; it will make you feel like you belong. The pages become less formal and more personal. To have your thoughts side by side, buttressing, explaining and magnifying the ones on the page gives the idea of everlastingness to the printed text. It keeps the memory of the experience fresh.

5. Observe the Writing Style

Ask yourself questions like, How would I write this, if given the opportunity? Or How would this look if I had penned it?

Be on the lookout for peculiar twists, things out of the way the author uses to achieve a particular effect.

Note the beginning, the middle (body, if nonfiction, rising action/climax, if fiction) and the landing of the story. We can always learn a thing or two from one another. Sometimes, it might be what not to do while writing in a particular field or genre.

What a writer needs to do above all else, is to live inside books. Read intensely and in every field there is. You need to be something of an expert at various times to write in a particular field.

So read. Let the words form pinions under you, fly you beyond the edge of reality until you tread unknown pastures, and smell the fragrance of the Shakespearean Rose.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan