Reading (and Writing) Is All About Human Connection.
I’ve spent 7,300 hours of my life reading — this is why.
The written word has always been special to me. I’ve been an avid reader most of my life — by avid, I mean I’ve probably averaged over an hour a day since I was 13 (and that’s just books, not including newspapers or other articles). It’s part of my identity, and it’s essential to my survival. If I ever signed up for Alone, I’d have to take a book as one of my 13 items. Lately, I’ve started writing, which has made me think more about the relationship between the reader and writer.
What I love about reading is the way it shares an interior world. The writer can share a thought, a feeling, a wish, a need, a smell, a story, a moment. They can be entirely made-up, but if they exist for the author, they exist for me. It’s a tiny brain transplant. Writer, I understand you. I get it.
In the modern world where genuine connections seem so hard to find, reading and writing is a way to feel a deep connection with someone in a unique way.
It’s a bridging of the gap between my mind and your mind. It’s as close to Being John Malkovich as we’ll ever get. We’re all travelling through this world in our own heads, intrinsically alone in our unique experiences of life. And then — through the magic of 26 characters and punctuation — I can receive a writer’s thoughts into my own.
Writing vs speaking
Of course, you can connect with people through conversation — and the expressions, gestures and tones add extra meaning — but there’s two benefits to writing over speaking. One is that you can go as deep as you want as quickly as you want, and the other is you have time for consideration.
If you got chatting to someone new in real life, the conversation would likely be fairly surface-level. It takes time to build a level of trust where you can talk about the things that you lay in bed thinking about at 3am. This is why alcohol can be great for building connections. Booze helps people talk about their real thoughts and feelings without the inhibition of worrying about social norms and acceptance. When you write something, you can go straight to 3am level. Instant slightly-drunk connection.
It can be liberating to share your strongest feelings and deepest thoughts. It’s also scary — there’s always that lurking fear of rejection. When publishing online, our writing can reach far corners of humanity, and we have no idea how it’ll be received. I’m sure there’s the author’s equivalent of a hungover ‘oh god, what did I say last night’ feeling. Not having the real-time feedback of conversation can lead us unchecked down a flawed path.
But the other benefit of written words is their consideration. Through editing, the message and meaning can be clarified and distilled to its most powerful form.
I know when I write, there’s much more that the surface level of meaning. I guess this is what my English teacher at school was trying to explain — a writer is saying more than just the words on the page. They’re making comments on memory, culture, and our human needs and desires. Their stories critique our experience of love, fear, loneliness, beauty, strength, and weakness. They’re drawing on larger thoughts than just those they’re writing about.
I think of a piece of writing like a flower that blooms on the tree of human experience. It can take years of growing roots and branches, absorbing the oxygen and nutrients of the space around. The tree cycles through the seasons of growth and decay. Finally, when the conditions are right, it produces the story — a flower that says ‘Come here. I have something for you.’
Fiction and empathy
A writer creates a world you can live in, a language you can speak, a mindset you can inhabit. This explains why readers have more empathy — they have come as close to living other people’s lives as it’s possible to.
Many of my favourite books I can’t bring myself to read again, because they were shattering experiences. We Need to Talk About Kevin made me feel what it’s like for a mother’s (unconditional) love to be undeserved. The Death of Bunny Monroe made me feel what it’s like to be driven by carnal forces rather than humanity towards others. The Choke made me feel what it’s like to be a powerless child in an adult’s world. These are worlds I can’t experience anywhere else. These books made me cry. (And not just a little bit. I was once reading on a train and had to take breaks between each sentence or become a complete emotional wreck in public.)
All creative work (movies, theatre, music, dance, art) has the power to move us and tell a story, but reading has a special force by being created in your own mind. It feels less like watching someone having an experience, and more like you are experiencing it yourself.
Non-fiction and meaning
My bookshelf contains more fiction than non-fiction books, but I’ll pretty much read everything. The non-fiction books that stay with me come from the perspective of human experience. I love the books that can turn your whole perspective of society on its head. They can take global trends and show how it stems from individuals — and how it effects individuals.
Atul Gawande fundamentally changed how I view the end of life experience when I read Being Mortal. He writes frankly about the different needs of the medical profession, people who are dying, and the people who love them. Chasing The Scream showed me how the law does not always protect, sometimes it destroys. See What You Made Me Do made me consider the societal undercurrents running through all intimate relationships.
While these books are based on facts — statistics, interviews, and other research — the author is also sharing their journey of revelation. The facts provide the structure. The author’s values, experiences, and personal voice flesh it out with meaning. Data has no value without meaning, and that requires interpretation which comes from our own experiences.
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Writing without experience
I recently read this article about GPT-3, a natural language processing algorithm. It’s a machine-learning technology which ‘ate’ the internet and can now produce paragraphs of text that are grammatically and contextually correct. The results are a fascinating insight into the way we talk about ourselves and each other, but the writing clearly lacks something. For example, when Philosopher AI was prompted with ‘my happiest memory’:
“There are several memories that I hold near and dear to my heart. The memories of my childhood are always the most vivid. I remember playing with my mother and father, brother and sister… My family never had much money, so we did not have any toys that were manufactured; it was all home-made stuff.”
You can read a whole article in the Guardian written by the GPT-3 technology.
It can describe things a human would describe, but it feels like there’s a layer missing. The writing is hollow and unconvincing. The technology is trying to create the flower without the tree, resulting in something slightly deformed. The words are there, but they lack the meaning created through human experience. There’s no human connection. There’s no mind to climb into.
Writers, get real
Reading has connected me with people who died a century before I was born. It’s made my work commute an experience leading an Antarctic expedition, or fleeing a French penal colony. Reading got me through a week in bed with chicken pox. (I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy non-stop and emerged pox-scarred and with trouble speaking in non-middle-earth English.) I see these as gifts from the writers (and editors and publishers) that created those books.
So, writers: There are readers out there who want to experience what you’ve lived, want to feel what you’re feeling. It doesn’t have to be autobiographical — but it does have to have meaning. Whatever meaning you’ve created from your unique human experience. Tell us about it. Don’t be afraid to let readers climb into your mind for a little while.
If you enjoyed this, check out more of my (free) Medium articles here: A little bit about me and my writing
