Toni Morrison: 'If There's a Book You Want to Read, Write It'
Morrison's most-quoted advice to writers came from her own experience of looking for a book that did not yet exist.
The gap in the library
Morrison grew up in a working-class Black community in Lorain, Ohio. The library shelves did not reflect that community. Decades later, as an editor and a novelist, she made it her project to put what was missing onto the shelves.
Why this is craft advice, not just morale
Writing toward your own taste forces you to be a serious reader of your own draft. Every page is judged against the page you wished someone else had given you.
What it asks of you
The sentence is an instruction to do work nobody is asking for. That is harder than it sounds. There is no editor waiting, no audience pre-built. Morrison's career is the proof that the audience arrives once the book exists.
A practice
Make a list of books you have looked for and not found — the subject, the voice, the perspective that is missing. The first item on that list is, in Morrison's economy, your assignment.
Analysis
The line is usually heard as motivational, a slogan to push past procrastination. Morrison's meaning is more pointed. She is talking about gaps — the books that have not been written because the people who would naturally write them have been told their stories are not literary, not commercial, not universal. The sentence is an instruction to fill those gaps yourself, because waiting for the industry to do it has historically not worked. There is also a craft point in the line. The book you would want to read is, by definition, a book you can recognise as good. Writing toward your own taste — toward the standard that would make you, the demanding reader, satisfied — is one of the few reliable ways to produce work that is both honest and disciplined. Morrison spent her career insisting that the answer to the absence of a book is not to complain about the absence but to write the book.
#writing#reading#representation
https://quotedmind.com/article/toni-morrison-write-the-book-you-want-to-read