It’s reading that’s hard
Writers complain a lot about how hard their work is. But dipping into Peter Elbow’s 1981 classic Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process (2nd edition, 1998) gave me a new appreciation for what readers are up against. Start with this insight: it’s readers who bring meaning to texts. For every word a writer uses, the reader must supply its meaning, either from pre-existing knowledge or from looking up the damned thing. “Meanings are in readers, not in …