Reading LIke a Writer

In college, I took an advanced composition class in which I had to write like Virginia Woolf and like Matthew Arnold. The way I was able to do that was by immersing me in it. So if you read what you want to write and submerse yourself in it, wallow in the best of that kind of writing, until you hear the voices and know the rules, you will start to write like the masters themselves. I highly recommend Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer because it’s an example of excellent writing and because it shows writers how to read in a way that they’ll learn from what they’re reading. How do we keep all this information in our brain? Now that’s a hard question, and one I struggle with, but I think it begins by taking notes and keeping them in a journal or at least in the notes app on your IPhone.