Well Read and Well Written
Join the Well Read Salon, with Trisha Day & Angela Rydell
“The writer puts the rain on the page and the reader makes it fall.” ~anonymous
Most successful authors are also avid readers who have discovered the only thing that compares with the pleasure to be found in reading is the pleasure to be found in expressing yourself in writing. This four-session salon will provide you with a chance to do both.
Combining a love of reading with a love of writing feeds your mind and your muse. It creates the right conditions for inspired writing, and for being well fed by the nourishment of the written word.
Well-read readers read for pure joy, a healthy mind, intellectual challenge, even creative development. It’s not what you read but how you read that matters—whether a bestselling detective novel or War and Peace.
Using examples from a wide variety of books, we’ll explore why reading and writing matter in an age of constant distraction and overstimulation. Program content will emphasize why we read and what books do for us, as well as how writers make that happen. We’ll not only discuss how reading deeply and fully can inform our own writing but how it can make us more well-rounded people.
- Discover how keeping a commonplace book reinforces the insights you takeaway from the books you read, even helps you understand the writers’ craft approaches.
- Get tips for digging out nuggets of gold you can marvel at and even steal without ever taking anything away from the books you love (music of the line, plot twists, empathetic characters, the shimmer of a metaphor…).
- Find out how to coach yourself to write better by reading well through asking smart questions about craft, deep themes, even underlying meaning in the work on the page.
- Use the time you already take to read and make it matter more by engaging whole-heartedly with the text, linking it to what you love—and what you’re writing.
- Experience how deep reading means quality is more important that quantity.
Participants will be invited to share what they’ve gained from the books they’ve read whether for pleasure or as sources of information and inspiration. Each session will include opportunities to try out a variety of writing exercises based on the books being discussed.
You’ll take away session handouts, a commonplace book template, a reading plan template, reading & writing prompts, book recommendations, and receive a replay of each meeting.
Trisha is our guest instructor and Angela will be co-facilitator. Meets on Zoom four Thursday evenings, every other week, starting mid-February (Feb 20, March 6 & 20, and April 3, from 6-7:30pm–plus 15 minutes of wiggle room at the end of each session for potential spillover course content and conversation).
Fee: $210 $150.00
To sign up, simply email Angela at angelarydell@gmail.com to let her know you’d like to join. She’ll send you registration info for payment via PayPal or check.
HOW WILL WELL READ HELP WRITERS?
Reading well is an on-ramp to writing well. And it can make both your writing time and reading time more efficient, meaningful—and satisfying.
I decided to offer this class in part because a student of mine learned all he needed about craft from the novel he was reading for pleasure last semester. And I cheered.
I didn’t teach him the craft techniques he took away from that novel. He investigated, gleaned insights and takeaways, and applied them to his writing—and he improved his work because he coached himself to write better by reading like a writer.
But I did teach him how to teach himself better writing skills—by being a smart, deep reader of the books he was in the middle of reading just for fun.
Join Well Read to gain more agency over your writing practice. Take away skills you can use to coach yourself to write better by reading well.