“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”
Robert Frost
Reading aloud our work can be so helpful and can be so important to our writing that I’ve gathered some writerly quotes about it to inspire and encourage you to consider it:
“Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken.”
C. S. Lewis
“Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn’t ‘hear.’ As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn’t my mother’s voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself . . . .”
“My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.”
Eudora Welty
“I still read everything aloud. I have a fundamental conviction that if a sentence cannot be read aloud with sincerity, conviction, and communicable emphasis, it’s not a good sentence. Good writing requires good rhythms and good words.”
Richard Marius
“Every book should have its own voice — what you hear in your head as you read to yourself.”
Mary Lee Settle
For some reason, I often have a hard time bringing myself to read my work aloud, so this post is written for me as much as for you. Write on!