Ever feel like this after reading a passage?
My God — that passage, Laura, is so *8&&#>>>* awesome, my hair blew straight back and knocked my neighbor’s glasses into her pizza! I don’t know that my action scenes have ruined anyone’s pizza yet, but did it get the reader to go back and read the line twice? Or 1ce and a half? You wonder, don’t you, reader (hi, that’s you!) why should I ever read more than once. I don’t read more than once, ever. While on a page, I’ll sleep through two paragraphs, read one, scan the next, skip the following, lose my place, etc. I am a lazy reader. I also have constant interruption from . . . what’s that — coffee? Glasses in my pizza? What are we talking about? Paying attention to the paragraph! Reading it – what — 2ce? Twice? My spell check can’t even tolerate the word. It keeps correcting it. What do we ever do that’s worth doing twice? Going for a coke refill (always worth it), and not a lot else.
I do tend to re-read my own paragraphs. I know — so self-absorbed. I even re-read my emails. Narcissism. I get that email regret that’s like buyers’ remorse, when I wonder, did I write ‘kinky’ instead of ‘inky’ in that last email to my great-grandmother? Probably. Oh well! She won’t be re-reading my big climax scene — she probably had a coke to refill.
What DOES get our attention any more. Major storms. Big chocolate desserts. A FREE CARWASH! A new episode of Project Runway. A “this driving lane free and unobstructed” sign. But everything else currently reads like a political slogan or a request for money. No one even answers the phone any more. I know — I haven’t heard a pick up all week. Even with my awesome $%_*&&** novel chapters available on this very blog. And what about the knuckle biting rescue scene in my new YA mermaid novel? It deserves fifteen reads!!! OK., thirteen. Certainly more than two.
I want to ask you good people (you, reader) what really blows your hair back? Reading your opinions might help my action scenes get more action . . . able. I want those great lines that DID make you read them again and again and again. Post them to me. And then give yourself a big chocolate dessert in the car wash. Twice.
Mariella Mehr — Poet, Memoirist, Acivisit, Survivor Not many Roma divulge their experience of the Holocaust. Unlike the many Jewish organizations which provide documentary evidence, . . .
“She begins searching for a stone. She works quickly but methodically, as if she were following a recipe that must be obeyed scrupulously if it‘s to succeed at all. She selects one roughly the size and shape of a pig‘s skull.” The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Great book. So meditative and at the same time, prose so supple it seems to slip through the fingers.