Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Prose offers a small anecdote to encapsulate her greatest learning from Anton Chekov. While commuting to teach a creative writing class in New Rochelle in the 1980s, Prose would often read the stories of Chekov on the bus. On the final day of her class, students asked her for her last, definitive bit of advice on writing. Prose suggested the students hone their powers of observation and consciousness. At the time, Prose believed her advice was influenced by her reading of Chekov’s short stories, informed by a deep, sympathetic observation of life. However, she soon came to feel that this writing advice was not what she had actually gleaned from Chekov. All through the semester, Prose had been noting a pattern: For every rule she conveyed in the New Rochelle writing class, a story by Chekov existed that would contradict the rule. For instance, she suggested a student not use similar names for characters in a story to avoid confusing the reader. The same day, she read Chekov’s “The Two Volodyas” (1983), featuring two identically named characters, on the bus. Chekov’s stories seemed to break every writing rule that Prose knew.