Hey nerds!1
Important question today: Who else skim reads Substack?
I feel like a Holden Caulfield phony here but I skim 85% of the essays I read on Substack. Quelle Horreur!
When I catch myself skimming (bad writer!) Q&As rumble in my brain:
What the fuck is wrong with my brain? It thinks skimming is the new normal? Turns out it is.
Why aren’t people writing more concisely? Do they know reading from a screen is actually changing the way we think? Yes, Skynet is coming for us.
Maybe long essayists don’t care about their craft? Why don’t they spend more time editing? Maybe they just need to get their shit out? That is actually a super fair point and
is right, sometimes you just have to get it over the fucking net.Why do I berate myself when skimming an author’s work? Don’t I care enough? Am I a horrible person? Turns out, I think I am.
Famous Writers & Internet Daddies
A couple weeks ago the fabulously funny
wrote a short essay, “idk about the whole ‘i’d have written a shorter letter if I’d had more time thing”.I agree that personal letters to your Australian bestie in 1986 are all about long form content. I had A LOT TO SAY ABOUT BOYS. Roll me up in teenage angst and I’ll pen you a thousand page letter in an afternoon.
But now that my life is bigger than, “Oh my god, did you see how hot he looked in his Vanier sweatshirt today,” I find myself delineating my reading for screens and paper.
Screen Reading
I want to read brevity. Brevity soothes my overwhelmed nervous system and brain. I want clarity in the written word, a soothing balm where the words flow. And yes, I’m lazy. If I can read your paragraph’s first sentence, then last and still get the gist I’m gonna do that.
Paper Reading
I want rich, lengthy paragraphs in my physical books. I want complex worlds and language that transport me out of my life. Right now I’m savouring Wolf Hall with
of Footnotes and Tangents. My Wolf Hall Trilogy Substack read along is feeding my creative, deep reading brain, while the weekly read along notes give me even more marrow to suck dry. (It’s not too late to join us friends!)Deep Reading Is Life
Turns out scientists have discovered our brains need deep reading. If we don’t spend time deeply reading our brains will lose the capacity. What the actual fuck! I do not want to be sucking on a Coke Extreme Zero, watching Love Island 2036 in my floating Wall-E chair.
Write How You Want
Just to be clear anyone can write HOWEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT. Long, Short, In Stanza or Haiku.
However, we’re in an age of e-skimming on screens and I believe, as writers, we need to think about, even if we tell to fuck off.
Hope you enjoyed skim reading my piece.
Love always,
Elizabeth.
Ps. I’m curious how you read. Please share.
I’m using nerds in the best possible way. Nerdship: How we love a thing with such verocity that we annoy others, and then one magical day we find other people who feel the same way about the thing we love. That is nerdship.
Ya know what? Quelle horror deux! I do the same. Sometimes I skim
The title and call it a day.