Avi

word craft

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Listening

listeningI recent­ly made an appear­ance at an event dur­ing which I was asked to read some­thing of my work. I did a few pieces from old­er books and than decid­ed to read some­thing new.  Folks enjoy hear­ing unpub­lished books. I enjoy get­ting a reac­tion, tak­ing it out for a test run, so to speak. When I do that, I usu­al­ly read the first chap­ter since it’s often too com­pli­cat­ed to explain a mid-stream sec­tion. That is what I did, read­ing some­thing I had worked on for a year. 

Folks—young and old—were atten­tive and engaged, giv­ing every indi­ca­tion they were enjoy­ing the read­ing. But as I read, I sensed some­thing wasn’t right. My read­ing done, I tried to decide what the prob­lem was but was whisked off to sign some books. Rule num­ber one when sign­ing: be atten­tive to the good folks that come along. 

But the minute I was free I went back to think­ing about that sec­tion. I lis­tened anew, as it were, to my read­ing. The moment I got back to my hotel room I brought the text up on my lap­top, and read it again, lis­ten­ing. And fig­ured out the prob­lem. I edit­ed and rewrote the sec­tion. The text became much bet­ter. How I wished I could have shared it with an audience. 

It all remind­ed me of some­thing the poet Robert Frost once said: “The ear is the best reader.”

8 thoughts on “Listening”

  1. Avi: This is so true with poet­ry. What appears on a page is so much stronger, more mean­ing­ful when read aloud. Song lyrics, for exam­ple, sit on a page. When sung new worlds open to words. Such good advice.

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  2. So glad some­one like YOU shared this, Avi! When a pro like you makes a dis­cov­ery about read­ing aloud, it res­onates. As a teacher of ele­men­tary chil­dren, I found out many years ago that if you ask a child to read you his/her piece be it a poem or a sto­ry aloud and they add their voice to the work mak­ing it sound as it does inside their head, the work takes on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent spir­it and flow, com­pared to how it looks on the page (ie their abil­i­ty with cor­rect win­dow-dress­ing ie punc­tu­a­tion, spelling, gram­mar etc.) Mov­ing from there.…when the kids work in a small writ­ing group and read their work aloud they will often change the words they are say­ing and stop and say, “oh I meant to put XYZ” and then jot it down.….I think we for­get the val­ue of read­ing aloud. And I love how you reit­er­at­ed Frost’s advice. That’s why a speech I write nev­er gets close enough to the way I talk when I don’t use notes. I like the off the cuff, from the heart type of speech, but then if I get off top­ic and can’t remem­ber if I said some­thing or not.…well.…then a script seems a safer choice, but a good speech takes tons of revi­sion. Thank you!

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  3. Inter­est­ing, Avi. And do you think that hav­ing peo­ple in the room, “ear wit­ness­es,” if you will, helped you lis­ten more care­ful­ly? Because in a sense you were lis­ten­ing through them?

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  4. I think read­ing aloud is one of the most pow­er­ful expe­ri­ences in a class­room, by kids and teachers.

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