I love reading and always have done so since before I could actually read. And so I should love reading, it seems, if I am to be a good writer: every great author consistently exhorts novice writers to Read, Read and Read Again! What a fantastically too-good-to-be-true enjoyable way to hone one's skills!! What fun to lie around with a book (or several), and to say earnestly to anyone who might ask what one is doing, that one is working - and working hard!
To say that I enjoyed reading before I could read needs a little explanation. When I was very small (being “but a wee lass” – we lived in Scotland), I recall kneeling on the carpet with my older brother one day, looking at a very large story book (It might not have been that large come to think of it, but it seemed enormous then). My brother was directing the proceedings (turning the pages) and seemed to know something about reading, so perhaps he had already started school, which means I would have been about three years old.
Until that memorable occasion, I had enjoyed books solely in the style of Alice in Wonderland: only pictures and conversation mattered. Now I learnt (in conversation with my brother) that the boring stuff that cluttered up the pages was called writing and that it was this stuff that actually told you what the story was – and if you knew how it worked you could tell yourself the story – without anyone else having to tell it to you (or inventing it ad hoc, as I suspect my brother was doing all along, guideing himself by the pictures).
What a revelation!!! What power! What independence! I wanted then and there to do this reading thing for myself! I eyed the hitherto ignored text with interest (but even with my attention on it, it still looked completely senseless). Then my brother pointed out some pictures in one story, each of which included a wavy stream of coloured words. It appeared that this was also writing. These wavy coloured words looked much more promising in terms of telling the story.
I proceeded to “tell” the story from the words in the picture. That is, I made the story up from the pictures and decided for myself what the writing was meant to convey. But the process was enchanting. I felt very proud that I could “read”. I continued to “read” even after my brother got bored and went off to do something more interesting.
Reflecting on this now, I see that in that long ago moment I experienced both my first pleasure in story-telling via the written word and the first headiness of scientific discovery (that is, I tested a received hypothesis. The evidence appeared sound - I looked at the words and sure enough a story occurred. Okay, the proof was not rigorous, but I was only three).
So there you have it - my “I was always meant to be a writer” story.
Of course it is by the same token my “I was always meant to be a scientist” story, or - as I have hitherto only ever considered it – my “I was always meant to be a keen reader” story.
The cynic might comment that the story did not reflect altogether to my credit, even if I was only but a wee lass. However, I did later make good on the reading bit. In the fullness of time (a mere two years later in real time, but nearly half a lifetime later for the three year old that I then was), I went to school. Though I have little memory of learning the mechanics of reading, I recall my delight at being allowed to read all the little Janet and John books one after the other.
Actually, I must have been a reading snob as a child. When I was about six, I noticed that “big people” read “big books” (lots of writing, few or no pictures) and so I was determined to read a “big book”. I had also noticed that big people did not read aloud – they just looked at the book. I determined that I would do the same.
And so it came about that the first “big” book that I chose to read was the unabridged version of Pinocchio. I am not sure why I chose it - perhaps I liked the cover picture, but it was most enjoyable, even though many of the words I could neither pronounce nor understand. And, yes, I did make the transition to silent reading during Pinocchio by the simple expedient of whispering the words more and more quietly to myself until only my lips were moving – and then, with a great effort of will, even the lip movement ceased. Hooray!!! Grown-up reading!
I promptly chose as my second “big” book, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Reading a book where on every page knights smote one another and dealt mighty and dolorous blows (verily cleaving each other from the nave to the chaps, forsooth) until they were sore wounded, whereupon one quoth unto the other, “prithee, get thee gone! Yea, and hie thee hence, an it please thee!” made as much sense as anything else I might have read at that age. How was I to know that the language that I took such pains to learn to read was obsolete? It was a great book!
No comments:
Post a Comment