Writing in the Margins

Write in the margins of other people's books. This is the best writing advice I have and the most controversial, because people who love books physically recoil at the idea of writing in them, and I understand the objection, and I disagree. A book you've marked up is a book you've read. Not scanned, not consumed — read. The marginalia is evidence of a conversation between you and the author, conducted across years and pages, and the conversation is the whole point of reading. I mark up everything I read. Underlines for sentences I want to remember. Stars for passages I want to revisit. Question marks for things I don't believe. Exclamation marks for things I didn't expect. And notes — short, scrawled, often illegible later — that record what I was thinking when the sentence hit. The notes are the important part. Not because they're brilliant. They're usually not. "Good" written in pencil next to a paragraph is not literary criticism. But "good" written five years ago tells me something about who I was as a reader then, and comparing it to what I think now tells me how my reading has changed, and how my reading has changed is a map of how my writing has changed. As a writer, reading is research. But only if you read actively. Passive reading — the kind where the words wash over you and you emerge with a general impression — is entertainment. Active reading — the kind where you stop after a paragraph and ask how did they do that — is education. Specific things to look for, pen in hand: How does the author handle transitions? The seam between two scenes is the hardest thing to get right and the easiest to overlook. When a writer moves you from one place to another and you don't feel the bump, mark it. Study the seam. How did they do it? What was the last image in the old scene? What was the first image in the new one? Is there a connection? How does the author control pace? Find a page that reads fast — a chase scene, an argument, a revelation. Count the sentence lengths. Short, short, short. Now find a slow page — a description, a meditation. Longer sentences. Commas. Subordinate clauses. The pace is in the syntax. Mark the fast pages and the slow pages differently. Compare. Where does the author withhold information? This is the hardest skill to learn from reading because it's invisible. The reader doesn't notice what wasn't said. But on a second reading, with a pen, you can find the gaps — the moments where the author chose not to explain, not to describe, not to tell you what the character was feeling. These gaps are where the reader does the work. The reader's work is what makes a story stick. Your margin notes are a record of your attention. Over time, they become a record of your growth. The books don't mind. The authors, if they're any good, would be pleased.