Readers creating writers

Readers expect to be argued with, and persuaded by. They don’t want to be told, repeatedly, what they already know, and they’re rarely tolerant of being lectured at. Writing happens among; writing is an exchange.

I’ll go further with this point, so bear with me. Readers aren’t just people out there who buy, borrow, or download your written words. Readers engage with texts, giving them a life those texts otherwise lack. Readers, we might even say, create writers. They do this by creating the books that writers make, sort of the way a musician creates a piece of music by playing the notes the composer has set down on paper.

Germano, William. On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts. University of Chicago Press, 2021. p. 30 (italics in original)

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan