One of my favorite weekly reads about writing is George Saunders' Story Club. Recently he wrote a post about the time it takes to grow into appreciation of a story, as a reader. He mentioned a Chekov story he'd read in college but didn't really "get" until many years later. Both his own writing and his skill as a reader needed time to mature. A big lesson from this, or at least my interpretation of what he learned was profound: to not discard that which we can't yet understand.
I read this before one of my afternoon walks and thought about it for the entire hour. I loved the idea because it was ever-expanding: our appreciation of writing is a skill to be developed just like knowing how to pace or draft good scenes or revise.
But the real take-away for me was this:
