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

“Imagine Milton enrolling in a graduate program for help with Paradise Lost, or Kafka enduring the seminar in which his classmates inform him that, frankly, they just don’t believe the part about the guy waking up one morning to find he’s a giant bug.”

Prose places great authors of the past in the unlikely context of a writing program to show why people have trouble believing writing can be taught. The work of Milton and Kafka is so singular and seemingly effortless that the very notion of them sitting in a workshop to seek help appears bizarre. However, the subtext here is that though these writers did not attend writing classes, they did work at their craft.

“It required what a friend calls ‘putting every word on trial for its life.’”

Through this tiny anecdote, author Francine Prose dismantles the myth that writing is effortless. Just like reading is done word by word, writing too is achieved one step at a time. To describe the process of fiercely editing one’s own writing, Prose uses the analogy of a trial. Writing entails carefully questioning the use and choice of each word.

“And who could have asked for better teachers: generous, uncritical, blessed with wisdom and genius, as endlessly forgiving as only the dead can be?”

Prose’s subtly humorous framing of her devotion to writers from the past introduces her insistence on The Importance of Studying the Great Works of Literature. She calls for close reading specifically of the classics, especially conducted in solitude. This approach, she argues, is one of the oldest forms of learning writing.