The Comfort of Re-reading by Helen Chambers

 

For a long time, I rarely re-read anything. Too many new and exciting books, too little time to read them all. It was only around 10 years ago that I finally gave myself permission to stop reading something I wasn’t enjoying - I used to read on, to the bitter end. No longer!

Despite being a voracious reader, there never seems enough time to read the new books: I rarely felt I had the time for revisiting anything. 

 

I read very quickly - can’t help it, always have. (See Philippa’s recent blog - 23rd March -  on slow reading!) Recently, I’ve been re-reading old favourites, trying to slow myself down in order to study their structure and appreciate the language and characterisation. But of course, we also read to lose ourselves, for escapism, and I always did like to ‘drink up’ a book! So I’ve re-enjoyed books by the marvellous Anne Charnock and Anthony Doerr and can definitely recommend the comfort of a re-read of a favourite. (Warning: It didn’t work on Ulysses by James Joyce - I struggled first time round and gave up completely on my second attempt!) Listening to a story read aloud (utter joy!) definitely helps me sip it at the speed the author intended (see my blog for The Writers Company on the benefits of listening!)

 

Then I discovered Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books by Cathy Rentzenbrink. This tells her life story through her reading. Like me, she was a regular library visitor, and our children’s reading matched. Reading this lovely (yes, comforting, yes joyful ) book provided me with a new ‘to be considered’ list, and from it I’ve also created a ‘to be re-read’ list, with some absolute favourites. So far, I’ve loved Any Human Heart by William Boyd,  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and am about to restart Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (before I watch the televised version).

 

When the world and all its horror is too much - and it is, increasingly, now - it’s good to be reminded of the pleasure in reading for escapism and enjoyment which I knew as I child. Which books are on your ‘to be re-read’ list?

The Problem with calling oneself a writer when one never writes anything - by Pauline Rendall.

I’ve just realised that the sci-fi and fantasy writer George RR Martin and I have a lot in common. No, it isn’t talent, I’ll give him that one. It’s that we both have a large body of unfinished work and we’re both arch procrastinators.

Of course, George’s form of procrastination involves several lucrative deals with HBO, and a couple of spin-off books (including a coffee table one). But he still isn’t anywhere near finishing his magnum opus, A Song of Ice and Fire. Whereas I only have five unfinished novels (it might be six), and my form of procrastination isn’t lucrative at all, but involves baking, gardening, reading recipes and complaining about not getting anything done. And if I hadn’t embarked on a messy rewrite of two of said novels so that they’re now more problematic than before, I might have beaten him to it.

But seriously, I always used to claim that there was no such thing as writers’ block, that the answer was just to buckle down and get on with it. Well I’d eat my words, if I had any to spare.

Now, research. Boy, I love research. I even went to Prague twice to work out how to exfiltrate a defector. And first lines? I’ve got some snappy first lines. It’s what comes next that’s the problem.

So what’s to be done? Answers on a postcard, please.

How Do You Read?

 

My novel To Be Frank, is going through the editing process with my publisher’s team; essential to releasing a book. I love writing and enjoy the editing of content and organisation, but I do find the detailed grammar and presentation aspects challenging. Having no qualifications in English Language or Literature, since O levels in 1970, it’s easy to feel inadequate. My medical degrees, scientific background and years of writing healthcare notes don’t seem to help.

     I’ve always read a lot but am a relatively slow reader, over-using the technique of sub-vocalisation I suspect, which commonly achieves about 250 words per minute. Visual reading, at approximately 700 words per minute, is at the other extreme. Apparently, proficient readers are able to read at 280-350 words per minute without compromising comprehension. When editing one surely has to slow read and going through an 88,000 manuscript takes time. 

             

    As a result of rereading To Be Frank so many times in recent weeks, I am aware that it is common to read what you think you’ve written rather than what is actually on the page. From a neuroscience point of view, proficient readers don’t read one word at a time and the human mind doesn’t normally read every letter by itself but reads the word as a whole. In proofreading, that idea flies out of the window.

    During my research into ways of reading, I went off piste and, leaving the editing process behind, I discovered so many styles of reading I’d never thought about in specific terms. Here are just a few snippets:

    The concept of ‘speed reading’ began in the late 1950s and can involve skimming and searching sentences for clues, or scanning where one looks for information in a sentence with the use of a mind map to organise it in a visually hierarchical manner. Meta-guiding is another technique, involving the visual guiding of the eye using a finger or a pointer.

    The other end of the spectrum is ‘slow reading’, which is the intentional reduction in the speed of reading to increase comprehension and pleasure. It originated in the study of philosophy and literature and there’s been an increase in interest in slow reading as a result of the ‘slow movement’ and its focus on a deceleration of the pace of modern life. (Close reading or deep reading is the use of slow reading in literary criticism). Sven Birkerts, an American essayist and literary critic, says in The Gutenberg Elegies (1994) that “Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms”.

    Typoglycemia, incidentally, is the ability to read jumbled words. It is thought that to see the first and last letters of a word, in the right place, is all that matters and that’s why we can so often solve the puzzles posted on social media, for example ‘I bte yuo cn rd ths sntnc’ or ‘do oyu fnid this smilpe to raed?’. Maybe that’s also why we can’t always see our own mistakes?

    So, I’m voting for slow reading, with an occasional bit of skimming and a dose of typoglycemia when I next read a novel, and meanwhile I give thanks to my editors for helping with the hard grind and time consuming work of copy-editing and proofreading.

New life for past novels?

With a publishing contract pending for one of my recent novels, I’ve been wondering what to do with old ones, written years ago. They mostly ‘did the rounds’ of rejection by agents and publishers, to an embarrassing degree, and are now committed to dusty drawers and forgotten files. I recognise that these novels probably demonstrated the faults and shortcomings listed as reasons for rejection by literary agents and individuals. For example, Gary Smailes: 'What to do if your novel was rejected' website here provides a comprehensive account of reasons for rejection, as well as a step-by-step strategy for moving on from this. Jericho Writers also has plenty of advice here. However, I haven’t found much about what writers could do with novels that haven’t made it to publication but might still be a good read.

When one or two of my novels started attracting agent interest and were longlisted and short-listed for competitions, I thought there might be hope of publication. Looking back at two in particular, I considered that they might still be worth a read, in spite of their failure to make it to the marketplace. I love telling stories and devising plots and my main motivation for seeking publication was to provide readers with entertainment, perhaps an element of escapism and a little insight into particular historical periods and events.

With this in mind, I decided to offer my novel TheBookbinder’s Daughter freely on my website. It was produced after much research, multiple drafts and edits, expert input and was short-listed for the Historical Novel Society International Award in 2013. Now as it gathers dust, I have nothing to lose and hope that others might enjoy the story. And perhaps readers might help me discover the reasons it was continuously rejected. Please let me know!

http://www.clarehawkins.co.uk/