33 Objective Reading

Yeah, I accidentally read the Thrushcross trilogy this week and ended up with startling new insights into what makes writing work, so let’s talk about objective reading.

The novels are: Leaving Thrushcross, The Icarus Triptych, and Mazewood.

I always forget just how much I like these books.

I also always forget that I did not write the books you and I read. I wrote DRAFTS. Then I had to turn the drafts from giant messes into actual books, through many many many rewrites. It’s a long process. It’s hard. It sucks. It’s not as rewarding to the brain chemistry as writing a first draft, at least for me.

As I’ve been doing rewrites of Summerlands and was getting all bummed because it wasn’t as good as those books, this was an enormously helpful reminder that we don’t write books. We write drafts and make them into books.

And the only road between drafts and books is objective reading. It’s true. How do you do it? Here’s how.