Thinking about pacing + the writing year
Thinking about pacing + the writing year
Is the pace at which we read fixed in childhood or does it develop over time?
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
As I read to my daughter I notice I’m developing a ‘reading aloud’ voice. The tone varies across different stories and characters but the pace is fairly steady. Sometimes, though, she grabs at the pages, wanting to go ahead or look back at a fun picture. She often starts to flip a couple of pages before the end, as though she is anticipating what’s coming. She bounces and smiles and gets excited by the last page. One book is a Golden Book about the Star Trek character, Spock, and on the last page P delightfully raises her hand in an attempt at a Vulcan salute.
I’ve been thinking about the pace of my reading. Did I learn that from my own parents? Has it changed over time? When I started listening to audiobooks I listened on 1.0 speed and now I listen at 1.2. Should I be reading to her at a slower pace to counter the speed at which she will consume content in just a couple of years? Help lay some of the foundations for a broader attention span?
I also think about pace a lot in my work. A sense of pace is crucial to writing and editing, and it’s one of the most difficult concepts to teach. I often recommend my students read articles like this one by Emma Viskic, which compares writing to music, and that helps them wrap their heads around the concept (as well as rhythm), but working with pace in their own practice can still be challenging.
Am I reasonably attuned to pace in writing because I had the privilege of being read to as a child? I don’t think it’s just that. My early stories were baggy and overwrought. I learnt pace too through cinema studies, reading scripts. I learnt it through reading books in all different genres (particularly deep reading, as for reviews). I learnt it through being edited, including in a journalistic context (when I wrote a lot of the news for Books+Publishing). I learnt it through reading poetry. I learnt it through reading manuscripts with a structural eye when I worked in publishing. And more recently, I think my sense of pace has leveled up further by listening to audiobooks.
So my daughter will find her own sense of pace in which to read, maybe write. She’s also possibly showing innate personal preferences – like jumping to the end because it’s more fun. Early parenting is partly being hyperaware of the effect of everything you do on your little one’s future wellbeing. But there are and will be countless other influences, plus hereditary traits, and I’m excited to witness P find her own pace over time.
Are there kidlets in your life you read to? What have you noticed? And as writers, how have you developed a sense of pace in your work?
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My writing year
I’ve published two pieces of short fiction this year (amid raising a baby and working; I’m quite proud of this achievement!).
‘The Station’ is about a pregnant scientist who arrives in a dusty desert town to take up her position at the mysterious ‘Station’, only to be thwarted by locals and a scheduled lockdown and blackout. It’s inspired by The Castle by Franz Kafka, and is quite possibly part of a longer WIP… It’s out now in Meanjin 82.4 Summer 2023.
‘In line’ is about a person who sells their place in line for a living. It was published in June in Paperback Bookshop’s Salon Series pamphlet alongside Anna MacDonald’s interview with me about my novel Moon Sugar. They may still have some copies in store at 60 Bourke St, Melbourne.
I hope you enjoy these stories!
Goals for 2024
I’ll continue to strive for balance between my teaching and research work (which I love), family and friend time, and writing. It’s been hard to take care of myself physically in the past year and I hope I can find a way to improve on that.
My writing and research interests are aligned and I’ll be continuing and hopefully expanding upon work underway on sustainability in the book industry, and work that features female and queer bodies, climate change, overlap/blurring between the body and page, and the absurd.
More specifically I hope to write a few strong short stories, encouraged by the Meanjin publication and inspired in part by author Grace Chan (who gave an excellent guest lecture to my students this year). If you’re not already following her Substack, do so!
I’ll also see if the long-form work calls me back this year but this one may possibly take a bit more time.
How about you?
My reading year
I usually post about the books I’ve enjoyed throughout the year by early Jan. I’ll do my best!
Learning over the holidays
If you’d like to do some self-paced learning over the hols, my course up on Kill Your Darlings might be for you. This course is the culmination of much of my teaching and mentoring as well as knowledge gained by working in publishing and as an editor over the years. It’s called ‘Preparing your manuscript for publication’. It’s a comprehensive look at the stages you can go through with your work before submitting to an agent or publisher, or self-publishing.
If it’s writing character you’d like some help with, here’s a link to my ‘Creating memorable characters’ course with 50% off for Substack subscribers until the end of the year.
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Take care, and all best wishes to you and yours for the holidays,
Angela