Reading to Write Like a Writer

In my senior year of high school, I took a creative writing class in hopes to reignite my once strong love of writing. I expected the entire class to consist of short stories and fiction. What I got was more than that: memoirs, poetry, creative nonfiction, and more. I learned so much, thoroughly enjoyed my class, and I found myself loving writing again. Ever since, I found myself being more aware of writing characteristics, plot points, distinct choices, vocabulary, and the way writers wrote different books, articles, poetry pieces, and even scripts for TV shows and movies. I’d notice these changes and note how I’d make it different, maybe even better, in my opinion. I guess I’d always done that but just never noticed it.

This concept of paying attention to aspects of writing is a skill called Reading Like a Writer. When you Read Like a Writer, you “work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing” (Bunn 72). By using the choices of other writers, you can become a better writer, choosing to make similar choices or completely different ones, based on your preference and writing style.

For example, one of the books we had to read in my creative writing class in preparations for our
memoirs was The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. It was a collection of memoirs that focused on Kingston’s lifestyles as a Chinese-Americans living in 20th century U.S. during the Chinese Revolution. Combining her autobiography with Chinese folktales, Kingston explains what her family was like, stories her mother told her of China before they came to the U.S., and the new life her family gained by crossing the ocean. While reading The Woman Warrior, I really got to understand Kingston. Not just by her stories, but by the choices she made in her writing; the stories she chose to tell, the ones she didn’t. Noticing her choices really helped me with writing my memoir and other pieces.

Even now, in my college English courses, I look back on the books, articles, and other writing pieces I’ve read over the years and let them help me decide how to write.

 

Works Cited

Bunn, Mike.”How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2010. 71-86. Writing Spaces. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976. Print.