Wholly Writ: Confessions Of A Slow Reader

This morning was like a no-bake cookie.  Assemble ingredients (phone, netbook, planner).  Jumble together haphazardly (update, network, broadcast all motility to cosmos, tweet-tweet!).  Douse brain in two cups of coffee.  Let coagulate.  No waiting necessary.  Delicious.

It’s difficult to imagine more instantaneous gratification than what our technology now affords us.  I can read what Suzy Q. is up to every two seconds.  I learn Johnny Torani’s religious views in five words or less.  Written matter is trimmed and minified past the point of complete sentences, past even the point of complete thoughts.  This is how we are exercising our brains to read.  We are giving ourselves literary ADHD.

For instance: a certain book was recommended to me by virtue of its brevity.  “It looks long, but seriously, you’ll get through it in, like, an afternoon.”  I did, too, and it was not a satisfying literary experience.  To make matters worse I read it on my phone, which further sped the process along: the screen would go dark if I didn’t “flip” the page every forty-five seconds.  No thanks.  My books don’t get to tell me to hurry up reading them.

Likewise my authors.  A lot of new fiction gives me the sense that the author is terrified to let readers put the book down.  I can sense them manipulating my experience a few pages to the end of each chapter, building the suspense until the chapter concludes with a sudden plot twist.  Well, I can’t put it down now!

I don’t like no-bake-cookie mornings.  But I really hate no-bake-cookie literature.  Good writing should require something of me; it should earn my investment and loyalty.  It’s like a good friendship: we don’t have to spend every waking hour together, because no matter how long we’re apart, we always pick up where we left off with ease.  Good writing doesn’t rely on tricks and manipulation to prevent me putting it down till I’ve read it cover to cover in one sitting and ordered the rest of the series on Amazon with overnight delivery.

So tomorrow morning I plan to wake up early, though I don’t need to.  I plan to make tea the slow way: kettle, teapot, looseleaf blend of my own invention. I will take it all out on the front porch with my current read and spend an hour or two sipping slowly, reading slowly.  It’s a good book.  It’s earned it.

Très Geek: Geek out with me in the Poetry and Fiction forum on the Sojourn discussion board!  Recommend some literature worth investing in!  Are you a writer?  What’s your longest running project in the works?  (I’ve got one going on three years…)  Readers, writers: unite!