Patricia's March 2023 Newsletter

The Pace of Reading

Writers often have the distinguished gift to portray ideas through literary medium. Readers are their audience, but they are also their companions. What trends now may change tides in a week or even a month. Authors invited their readers on a journey where life and literary art coincide, where time and grace pause and accelerate not only at the ‘pace’ of writing, but by the reader’s choice and ability. Sometimes the rhythm of the author’s writing encourages the reader to engage his senses of sight, imagined hearing and imagined touch all enveloped into the words presented before him. What he sees is an outline of form. The form of character is filled with your sensory perception and interrupted through your social filters. Still, you the reader are able to walk through the novel. You are able to stroll alongside the characters as their silent voice, encouraging them to take practical risks, supporting them through their failures and admonishing them for not listening ot their instincts. As you follow through the sequence of events, you find that your eyes may skip ahead from anticipating the next event or action. Then you the reader, at times, slow or pause, pondering whether you understand what had just happened. You feel, but not with your hands. You the reader empathize with the character. Your heart drops when your character receives devastating news. You may even feel anger at the suspense of obvious, but imminent danger that the character should expect to encounter. The pace of the scene may accelerate your heart rate. Quietly you set your eyes, in your cozy environment, stepping into the pages of the novel, and seeking only to get to know them better—and to read a good story. You the reader seek to delve further now. Escapism is not he primary goal. A reflection of the reader’s experience hidden within the characters’ reality becomes the common fodder for which they relate. As you turn the page, you see the highs and lows of their journey. The next page becomes the waving of the hand, encouraging you to continue, promising more than before. You sneak away further into the plot, hoping not to lose yourself too far into their identities. Thereafter, the ‘pacing’ becomes less of a focus and the depth of the climax that the plot reaches becomes the greater focus. So what you know and thought of before is enhanced by what you learned as you continue the story. A completion of ponderings bounce around the reader’s mind and settle into a warm bastion of literary meanings lifting the readers’ awareness and adding a bit of reality through fiction into their repotoire of life experience. So as Spring approaches and you pile up those books in the order you wish to read, consider that once you have opened that novel to its first page that you have accepted the invitation to enter these characters’ lives. Now you understand that those character are ready to host you as their literary guest.