How do reading and writing relate to one another? It really does feel you can’t be a writer unless you’re reader, in a way what would be the impetus to write unless you love to read? I teach writing classes and I always suggest to people that if you want to write, read widely and read as much as possible. Because you can learn so much almost from osmosis from what fine writers ahead of have done.
And looking at it in a slightly different way, kids that like to write often like to read. And if they’re strong readers they ask questions about the writing process. For example I can always tell how much kids are reading and how focused they are by the questions they ask. And kids will ask questions about ellipses like why are those three dots there? But the fact that they even notice them shows me how attune they are to writing.
And they want to take that information, you know the answers that you give as a visiting author in the schools, they want to take that knowledge back to their own writing. In other words, “Mary Quattlebaum used ellipses to give a pause there. I want to give a pause in my writing so I’m going to use ellipses too.”
So I love to go into the schools and I love to hear the questions that kids ask because I think that they want, they’re hungry to know how you do it so they can go back to their own writing and they can write with a greater awareness.
You can’t create the art unless you know the nuts and bolts, it’s almost like a carpenter saying well I have this great idea for a house and it’s going to be beautiful I see it in my mind and then not knowing how to use a hammer and nails, and not knowing how to saw boards. The house can only stay in his head as a vision and not become something real if he doesn’t know how to use the tools of his trade.
