The Writer/Reader Relationship

When I tell people I am a writer, their first words are, “Really? Who is your favorite writer?”  I am not asked the questions other writers claim they are asked like “Where do you get your ideas?” or “Who is your inspiration?” or “How do you find time to write?” No, I am the fortunate one asked to share my favorite writers.

Perhaps I should take this as a complement; after all, I did spend over 20 years in the classroom, trying to help others better their writing by teaching them the basics and giving them necessary feedback. Yet, maybe in their minds I fit the stereotype of a reader rather than that of a writer; yet, perhaps I -- like my new friends -- temporarily forget how important the relationship is between the reader and the writer and the significance of each entity in the process. After all, in order to be successful, the writer cannot forget his reader, and if there is no writer then what will the reader find to do?

Nonetheless, in order to answer the question posed to me by my new friends, my brain immediately switches into analytical mode: do I like James Patterson and his style and genre more than I appreciate the style and genre of Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts or Debbie Macomber?

Then it occurs to me that I don’t necessarily have a favorite author. I know what I like and it is what I look for when I pick something to read:

I want to be told a good story. I want to be held in suspense. I want to feel the tension -- that sensation that keeps me turning the pages. I want to be in the setting. I want to feel the couch the character is sitting on; I want to taste the food he is eating and the drink he brings to his lips. I want to feel what the characters feel – their fear, their pain, their joy. I want to laugh and I want to cry with my characters. I want to study the symbolism the author uses and try to figure out what part the symbolism plays in the theme.

I want the author to remember me – his or her reader – and make the story come to life for me.