Significance of Writing/Reading Essay
“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time: I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you; their expression and smile did not strike delight to my inmost heart so for nothing” - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
They way I feel about books and reading, could be comparable to the way Mr. Rochester feels about Jane. They are lively, refreshing, they inspire deep feelings and induce sparks of self-reflection. They are important, and I feel something deep and enduring about them. They are informative, provide endless entertainment, and stimulate my imagination. I have a relationship with reading (and therefore writing) that is sometimes as tangible as one between two people.
According to Sven Birkerts people fall into two categories, readers and non-readers, I have always been a reader. Even before I could read myself, my parents and relatives spent long hours reading to me, and telling me stories. This was as much because I enjoyed them as because (too many becauses) my parents understood the importance of literature. My mother still loves to tell a story about one night when my grandmother was watching me and I asked for a story. Imagine a short, chubby, curly-haired toddler in footsie pajama’s, padding across the carpet grinning, and handing you book after book to read all night. My grandmother *was understandably worn out by the time my parents got back. Once I learned to read to myself the possibilities were endless. My first book was No Dog’s Allowed and I still have it. The story is hilarious, for a child anyway. It is about of a family that must disguise the family dog as a person to stay in a hotel while +on vacation. The colors are bright, and the tone is non condescending. As long as I can remember the quaint, girly furniture in my room has included a fully stocked bookshelf, with books similarly colorful, that got bigger as I did and changed, as did the rest of my furniture to fit my tastes concerning interior design. Currently I have two large bookshelves, stained dark by hand (mine, to be precise) and designed to look antique. I was the kid that hid under pink and white, floral print blankets with a flashlight and a Goosebumps book. Lately I’m the student with a desk lamp who stays up into the wee hours to finish a Sookie Stackhouse novel .
As strange as it sounds, I’ve never considered reading and writing a package. In fact, if you could say that my relationship with reading was that of close friends, writing was (and still is) a moody friend who is sometimes kind or fun to be with and sometimes down-right mean, with no obvious transition period. I didn’t (and still don’t) make the time to write, without it being absolutely necessary. The structure, the technique of writing was mostly lost to me as a kid, and even now is kind of foggy, immaterial.
I took AP english my junior year of high school because everyone said I would never make it to college unless I did. That was the first time it occurred to me that there was a true blue, tried and tested writing process and that I should actually use it. Organization is a good thing! Outlines are easy, and make your writing better! What a Concept! Unfortunately this epiphany didn’t actually make my writing any better. In fact it down right intimidated me until I didn’t want to write anything. Like Birkerts, I was previously under the impression that writing just fell from your brain onto paper, like words sometimes fly out of your mouth. If I had to work at it, that would make criticism particularly painful. It’s one thing to hear that something that just popped out of your brain is off, but quite another to be told that something you’ve thought through, tweaked, and labored over isn’t right. My sixteen year old self wondered why anyone would put themselves up for such scrutiny and inevitable disappointment (I can be a bit of a cynic) and finding no good reason for it, avoided writing and turned back to reading. Even though my writing stalled entirely, my reading evolved markedly. I stopped reading girly, teen novels and tried to get into the classics. That went badly. I just couldn’t finish a book, even though I liked Dante’s idea of an inferno, and the historical significance behind it. There wasn’t enough overt action to hold my attention. I needed guns, or romance, or angst, portrayed clearly enough for me to imagine it vividly as opposed to a dim guess. Reading in class didn’t help either. I felt extremely guilty about not being interested in our reading and Hawthorne scarred me for life. I am fairly certain I’ll never read The Scarlet Letter again. Then I picked up Gone With The Wind and found my middle ground. It was historical, and significant (I was told) and the characters were so brilliantly portrayed that it felt like watching a movie. Even if the significance of the book, and it’s literary merit, escaped me for the most part, I was happy, and inspired to try harder at my writing. This newfound motivation was quickly shot-down. Despite the fact that I didn’t want to write -especially about the painful, illusive books we were reading- there was no choice. AP stands for Writing Intensive. So I wrote automatically, blandly, criticism from my teacher was intimidated me. Anytime you get a B on your own free-style autobiography, your likely to be skittish. What little style I had was buried-I didn’t want to seem pretentious since my english teacher quickly let me know that I (like all teenagers) had no personal opinion of any note. I was literally afraid to make my writing stand out, even though I wanted it to.
Whatever else is gotten from this essay, it should be clear that writing and reading particular have always played a significant part in my life. Reading books about kids like helped me learn to socialize, in theory anyway. I was shy, and reading about how other kids interacted helped me figure out what to do when I was faced with a group of my peers in real life. This was really important in shaping the person I am now. When I was older historical fiction taught me about a subject I was really interested in. Contemporary fiction showed me another way of life and, remarkably helped me focus on college and career goals. I mean, you can’t very well have a sprawling penthouse apartment, where you host the most memorable parties in the city without a good education and exciting career can you? You can’t be a sophisticated, coffee sipping, globe-trotting intellectual either. Reading broadened my vocabulary and writing helped keep it that way. Eventually I learned to organize my thoughts into coherent papers and I stopped worrying about what other people thought so much. So, I love to read. The classics no longer intimidate me, Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and I still don’t quite love to write, but I’m getting there.