Making Marks

Today in Creative Writing, we got off-topic. Let's just say my instructor can get caught up in a discussion/argument as easily as any of us, and thought it important to try to convince us to write in our books.

Most of us were shocked; I was unsure. Some books I do mark in, without feeling. I avoid highlighting textbooks, do so when it is just too hard to follow without highlighting, which makes me pay more attention, or when it is too interesting to read without getting distracted, in which case I highlight so that I will come back and find it again later.

I suppose the latter is why my instructor wants us to do the same. "You will never be great writers if you don't mark up your books!" he says, enthusiastically, while my neighbors shudder with horror. "I know why you don't want to mark them, it's because you want to SELL it later on!" he barks, but good-humoredly.

"No! It's the principle of the thing," says one. "It's sacrilege!" says another. "I might as well burn my books!" "Don't you think it's distracting when you want to re-read it?!"

"NO! No, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no no no NO!" he says.

I'm not sure why I feel so uncomfortable. I am, after all, the one who wrote in the school paper: "My sister and I shared a copy of Harry Potter 7 this summer, and instead of calmly taking turns, my sister ripped each chapter from the book as she finished it and passed it directly to me, so that I was only one chapter behind."

But Dad always said, never leave a book on the ground! Take care of your books! Treat them with respect! Books are important! Never harm a book!

I'm not sure, but I think "Don't write/draw in your books" was included with those as well.

I don't really see the connection between great writers and making marks in books, I must confess. Usually, when a sentence or phrase or passage is especially interesting or moving or affects me in some way, I set down the book for a moment, and think. Sometimes all I think is "wow", over and over in my head. Other times I actually say the "wow" out loud. And other times I reflect on the words, or the metaphor or the personification or the unusual use of anaphora.

If I'm really touched, I jot it down in the little notebook I carry with me at all times - or the 'jotter', as my instructor calls it. (We are all required to have one and I was thrilled when he announced this, because I have carried a 'jotter' around with me for pretty much ever.)

Surely that is nearly as effective as marking? It won't be there when I reread the book, years later, but I don't think that's the part that he thinks is valuable to a budding writer - rather, the part where you stop and think and reflect.

So I am still undecided on the marking bit. (Oof, all of this British I'm reading is getting to my English. I write like an Englishman and speak like a Canadian. What is happening to me?) Part of me thinks my European classmates just take greater care with their books because they are so expensive here; another part thinks, for some reason, that I should not write in the margins of great published works. It's very tricky.

Kind of like writing three startling opening sentences. When I try for startling, I end up with strange. Like, "The night that Elizabeth Arrow saw a ghost was the night that she quit eating ice cream after dinner."

Is it strange? Yes. Does it draw the reader in? Perhaps. But is it startling? Meh... Not really.