After reading and annotating how to Mike Bunn’s “Read like a Writer” and Toni Morrison’s “The Reader as Artist”. I found that to read just to read isn’t the same as to read as like a writer. To read like a writer means to understand the message the author is trying to convey while also trying to understand why the author chose this way to convey that message. To understand how to read like a writer you have to understand no two stories are the same. Even if they are talking about the same event, place, thing, idea, or person, its how the author choses to deliver that story that changes the way the reader perceives it. For example, states, “The words on the page are only half the story, says Toni Morrison. The rest is what you bring to the party.” this is an important idea in the article because I feel as though Me and Toni Morrison are explaining the close to the same thing. However, her writing style lets the reader interpret what she meant without having to go into extreme detail to explain herself. Toni Morrison tells the reader that her passion for writing came long before her time in school, but instead came in her earlier years of listening. I believe this is also important to understand because listening is key to understanding and understanding is a major part of writing. Anyone can hear a sentence and write it down word for word without understanding what they just wrote. It takes someone willing enough to listen to those words and understand the meaning behind them, not so they can just copy and replicate the words but to write them in their own words built from their own understanding.

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A quote I found really interesting was a quote in “Read like a Writer” it states,

“When we read like writers we understand and participate in the writing. We see the choices the writer has made, and we see how the writer has coped with the consequences of those choices . . . We “see” what the writer is doing because we read as writers; we see because we have written ourselves and know the territory, know the feel of it, know some of the moves ourselves.”

I found this quote interesting because even if you are a novice or experienced writer you may read a piece of writing and be able to relate to the context of the story. Or, you could read a piece of writing a relate to the way the author chose to introduce or support the context of their writing. It could be maybe their use of quotations, or commas, or their use of alliteration or hyperbole that maybe the reader found intriguing or familiar.

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