I guess I was a pretty
privileged kid growing up, though it often didn’t feel that way. There were plenty of challenges, that I won’t
go into here, though it’s safe to say we had financial security and little danger
of physical harm, despite our devotion to risky behavior and thwarting our
parents’ best laid plans to keep us safe.
One
unalloyed benefit to my upbringing was we were a family of readers. My mother, older brother, aunts and
grandmothers all read like crazy. Books
were all over the houses, and easily accessible. Many were popular fictions – detective novels
and door-stop bestsellers, but there was plenty of more erudite fare, and all I
had to do was reach out my hand and grab anything open on a coffee table or nightstand.
When we
were young children, we were read to every night. I will go out on a limb and declare there’s
no better way to instill a love of the written word on tender young minds. We did it with our own son, and I think it
helped form his life in the best possible way. I
wasn’t a very good student. I never
liked just sitting there listening to someone in the front of a room talk at
me. But because I read so much, I could
make up for it in odd ways that bailed me out.
And I could always write well enough, since I’d been trained at home on
the subtleties, ebb and flow, the nuances of language.
I read
virtually everything my older brother read, since he’d pass the books and articles to
me when he was finished. Because I did
everything he did, this was standard practice.
He was an omnivorous, if idiosyncratic, reader, so this also served me
well. My mother and I discussed these books, so there was instruction along the way. I developed some
friendships with older kids who would also pass along their favorite books, which
I would introduce into the family literary ecosystem.
One
particularly precocious kid I knew turned me on to physics, which totally befuddled
my family members, though he gifted me with a lifelong interest in the subject,
little of which I’ve ever understood. I
still like reading about it, even if the comprehension is fleetingly
transitory.
In the
same way, I love archeology, paleontology, geography (maps!), architecture,
auto mechanics, Buddhism, European history and military strategy, by knowing
just enough to keep reading, even if only a tiny bit sticks.
I owe
it all to our mother and grandmothers reading us A. A Milne and Dr. Seuss, while
I followed along, deciphering the words as she spoke. It was magical, this transformation of
thought into symbols that you could then retain, and reproduce yourself. What a marvel, what a gift.
If this
be privilege, then I’m among the most blessed who ever lived. I didn’t know to seek it out, it was just delivered
to me, tucked into bed and hanging on every word.
Not all readers write, but
all writers read. It’s essential. The first thing a writing coach will say is,
“Read.” You need to swim in that ocean
of words to be facile in conjuring them yourself. However, just to heighten the challenge of
writing, you also have to find your own voice.
I stopped reading fiction for several years so I could clean all the
chattering voices out of my head, and with luck, find my own. Though I didn’t stop reading nonfiction,
focusing on the best writers I could find (Winston Churchill, Freud, Stephen
Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas, Machiavelli, Kant, Malcom Goldstein, Bill Bryson, etc.) And along the way, I learned a few
things.
So I’ll
repeat what I’ve already written. If you
want to write, read. And then write all
the time. Write anything, just don’t
stop. After a few million words, you’ll begin
to know what you sound like, and that’s the beginning. You can take it from there.
