Tharp suggests reading backward through a writer’s works. It lets you see how things have changed from a different perspective.

I think this would be a good way to deal with the Sookie paper. Start at the end and go backwards. I’m looking for three different sets of things, maybe four eventually. But I could look backwards as well as I can look forwards.

I think this might be a positive idea for that work. (Due in October.)

Also, she says she “reads fat,” which is reading related texts surrounding the work. She reads what the author wrote before and after. What people the author was reading read, etc. I read this way when I am researching. I’m not sure I do it all the rest of the time.

I don’t really like the term either. Reading wide would be better for me, as if someone is hurrying down the road in a sports car, but I am in front in an eighteen wheeler taking up the whole road. It’s a little denser, a little slower, but you get more out of it… You don’t just arrive, you get there with whatever you were pulling.

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. Read on the Kindle.