My Partner Reader
My first mystery was published in June of 2017—Tom Kies and I share a “book birthday—and unless I misremember**—Donis Casey was present at the launch of both of our baby books at The Poisoned Pen. It’s all a blur. In spite of my longing for “real readers”—and although I was given to shouting out with no warning, “Hey! Somebody, somewhere, could be reading my book right now!”—I didn’t have a clue about the role readers were about to play in my writing life. I didn’t understand—until time passed and there was evidence actual human beings were reading my mysteries—my writing process had been incomplete.
In my first career, as an advertising copywriter, I thought of readers—or listeners or watchers—as the people I was addressing—a demographic based on age, gender, race, marital status, and so on, unto forever. I considered them to be people with needs or problems a product or service might fulfill or solve. I needed to understand them in order to sell them something. I thought, very tenderly sometimes, about what they wanted and needed, even their hopes and dreams, but at the end of the day it wasn’t a relationship. They were a target. I was writing “at them.”
When I wrote my first novel, a fantasy for young adults, those unfathomable alien beings were “my audience.” I was writing “for them.” I thought a good bit about what would woo and entertain them, but mostly I was in a warm, fuzzy relationship with my characters. One of whom was, in fact, warm and fuzzy. I followed my guys around, eavesdropped on them, admired how brave and funny they were. Their adventures unfolded in front of me and I wrote them down. Pantser? Yeah. Big time. No regrets. In truth, I was my reader then. I was writing for me. And she adored my story.
When Too Lucky To Live was published, I’d still had very little experience of what it means for a writer to be in partnership with a body of readers. To be sure, I’d been revising my story to meet the standards of an agent, a publisher, an editor. Master readers. Learning from them how to listen to seasoned advice and smart suggestions, I began to understand the meaning and the value of collaboration. To see weak spots, fix them, feel the work getting better.
The door was open to a new way for me to experience the process, but my Partner Reader didn’t really show up until I started the second book in my series. I’m guessing she was always there, but at last I could hear her, and, now into the third book, I hear her better every day. She’s there as I write. As I reread what I write. As I slash, burn, and fine tune. Her presence is unconscious a lot of the time, but she’s plenty conscious enough to be Sacagawea for my expedition and save me from at least some of the bears.
American essayist, Rebecca Solnit, in her book The Faraway Nearby says, “A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.” I get that now. I got it, like a lightning bolt, from an article, the much revered and honored author, George Saunders wrote for The Guardian.*
He pictures the writer as an optometrist, constantly asking his reader, “Is it better like this? Or like this?” He insists that you imagine your reader as being “as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well intentioned as you.” And says that “ to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her.” The result is, he says, “in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.” I can bear witness to the soundness of this advice.
I can tell you, too, that the more I write, the louder and more insistent my Partner Reader is. She’s sitting next to me right here, now, as I write this for you. She’s bright and kind. She doesn’t want me to make a fool of myself. And regardless of whatever personal pronoun you choose, she is you.
*P.S. The most valuable part of this post is the link. You can thank me later.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write
________
**You do not misremember, Annie. I was indeed present at the Phoenix launch of both yours and Tom's books -- Donis
