This piece first appeared in Periphery Drafts #19.

I’ve been reading avidly since I was a wee tyke—since I was maybe seven years old? My relationship to the written word changed when I started writing fiction, and it frankly kind of sucks (not that I’d trade it for the alternative). It’s a rare book that I can just let myself fall into anymore. Instead, I find myself analyzing everything about the books I’m reading as if I was critiquing each and every one of them. It’s impossible to shut off.

Copy edits just leap off the page. The lack of needed dialogue tags. Names getting mixed up. All the mistakes that sneak their way into every book and resist all attempts at rooting them out.

But I also notice the craftsmanship. An author does something brilliant with dialogue or uses a beautiful turn of phrase. Hilarious quips or biting observations. All of these things will yank me out of the story as I weigh their merits and turn them over and over again in my head.

Honestly, I’m a little exhausting. 😅

It’s Not Just for Writers

I know this is the case for other craftspeople, too. A housepainter judges the walls of rooms as they enter. A musician listens to the technique of most of what they hear. A record producer weighs the balance of the music playing all around them. A fashion maven can’t unsee the ugly in my fashion choices when I come waltzing by.

This is the lot of anyone who develops a craft, and it’s part of the process of getting better. But there are times when I wish I could simply disappear into a world someone else has built without wondering how they built it.

When a novel manages to do that anyway—to make me forget the craft and remember only the story—I appreciate it all the more. Because I know just how difficult that trick really is.