I need to read more. Reading is writing. The more you read, the better writer you become.
I always have a stack of books by my bed. And stacks everywhere, all around the house. Mostly on bookshelves, but I’m running out of bookshelves and they’re starting to appear on this table or in that corner. Which is why, since a year or so before the pandemic, I started using the library more often. Changing my default from “Buy it now!” to “Check it out.” Seattle has an awesome library system and a highly literate populous. We are a city of readers and writers.
But lately, I haven’t been so disciplined about reading at least 20 pages per day. Lately, I’ve been distracted.
A colleague recently said that the artificial intelligence features in Microsoft Word “make you a better writer.”
No. I said. No, they don’t.
They count words and correct spelling errors and recommend minor word changes. But they do not come any where near the discerning pen of a seasoned editor. Like Kelly Walker, the wonderful editor I worked with as a board member of ARCADE. The woman who gave me my first rejection but accepted my work several years later. Or Natalia Ilyin, my graduate semiotics professor who left so many red marks on my papers that I thought maybe I’d slit my wrists unknowingly while writing the essay, blood letting all over the page. Or the editors I worked with at NPR, many of whom are now at the New York Times, including Claire O’Neill, whom I hope to meet for Zoom coffee before the end of the year. An editor who tells you how it flows or if it even does. Who tells you this entire paragraph would be better like this and that one should be deleted altogether. One who asks what does it all mean and why should the reader even care? An editor who asks, in so many words, Callie, what is your fucking point? Because a piece of writing can be semantically, grammatically perfect and still be a piece of bad writing. Good writing is far more than just mechanics. Good writing is good mechanics plus heart and soul and story and meaning and most of all, good writing is a strong point-of-view.
Speaking of good writing, one of my favorite things to read is the food writing in The New York Times Magazine. From this week’s gem, A Crispy Upgrade for Cheese and Crackers, by the wonderful restaurateur and writer, Gabrielle Hamilton:
There’s sawdust all over the floors of the East Village institution, and the place smells sour and stale, but the waiter wears a formal gray waiter’s jacket with lapels and pouch pockets. This makes sense, too: It’s a cash-only operation, and there’s famously no cash register, so he runs the cash-and-carry operation out of his pockets. When you order the cheese plate, you have a choice, too: small or large. It’s a pile of wan, rubbery Cheddar, a stack of raw white onion, and before Covid-19, they used to set it down with a mug (now a plastic takeout cup) of wickedly hot brown mustard, which you dipped into with a wooden tongue depressor to spread onto the crackers. The crackers, then and now, have always been a half sleeve of saltines, with the papery plastic-wrapper seam hospitably split open for you by someone back in the kitchen. It’s a perfection of unpretentiousness.
That writing is so good it makes me want to book a ticket to NYC this weekend just to go to a smelly dive bar and eat saltine crackers. That writing is so good, it makes me want to read at least 20 minutes per day.
Forging.
Things That Nourished My Writing: November 13 - 22.
FOOD
Seared Scallops and Shaved Brussels Sum Tum at Stoneburner in Ballard.
Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes. What I eat for breakfast most days.
LITERARY
The Readerly app for logging books I’ve read and books I want to read. I abandoned Good Reads about a year ago.
The Best American Short Stories 2020.
MUSIC
Bria introduced me to this song and I love it.
I also like this guy, discovered via an article in the New Yorker.
TECHNOLOGY
I’ve been digging Airtable for managing Bellflower work lately.
The dashboard on NaNoWriMo. So motivating!
PEOPLE
Our good friend and photographer, Rocky. Who took new product shots for Bellflower.