Skimming, And Why I Dislike It

Greetings, everyone. How has the week been so far for you all? Good? Well that's just wonderful.

Because mine has been absolutely horrid.

Wednesday morning (of last week, obviously) I woke up to excruciating tooth pain. It was so strong that I could barely move my mouth without it feeling like someone stabbed at my gums with a machete. After very little deliberation, my husband set up an appointment for my dentist, since I am both terrified of the dentist and could barely speak.

Trying to get me to go to the dentist is like trying to give a cat a bath.

The earliest I could get in was Friday, so I sat there for the next two days shoving tylenol into my mouth and whining to my husband about how I no longer wanted to live in this cold, cruel world.

I'm currently working on three projects. The Antithesis is never-ending, what with all the art I need to draw for it, and the emails I need to answer, and the episodes I need to publish. The others are a collaboration piece I'm working on with a long-time friend and talented writer, and a prequel to The Antithesis, though it's intended to be read after the former. Oh, and then MCAT studying on top of that.

So needless to say, I don't really have the time for any effing tooth pain. Because while I was trying to write, the pain was blaring like a fog-horn and I could barely concentrate. I'm surprised I'd been able to publish Thursday's article.

Come Friday afternoon, I walked out of the dentist's office with a referral to an oral surgeon. I'd learned my right lower wisdom tooth is infected, and thus we were removing all four of them two weeks from today.

I got home on the verge of a panic attack, considering I'd never had surgery prior, and the idea of being placed under anesthesia scares me. I don't like the idea of being knocked out and completely at the hands of men and women I'd only met for about ten minutes beforehand.

I sat at my desk, scowling over the fact that I'd have to live with this tooth pain for another two weeks, my stomach flipping from anxiety of being told I will need surgery, and I decided to check my site statics while shoving handfuls of tums into my mouth.

The statistics site I go through that tracks and analyzes my web-serial allows me to get a detailed view of who looks at what, and when. My eyes trailed to the top of the list and saw a person had been on my site for four hours reading through the story. At first this pleased me, making the hell that was my day seem a little nicer. Until, of course, I clicked on their detailed page visit analysis, and found that they'd made it through almost the entirety of the story that had been posted so far. They'd only spent about three to five minutes on each episode.

Let me tell you; there is nothing more frustrating than having horrendous tooth pain, nausea, and the discovery that a person is skimming through what took you months and months of careful and thoughtful writing in only a couple of hours.

Right now you're lofting a brow at me, going: 'Who cares? At least they're reading it."

Allow me to elaborate.

They're not actually reading it. I don't even know what they're doing. But you would be amazed at how many people actually skim through books, rather than taking their time and reading the entire thing. In fact, the behavior of skimming confuses me. If you're skimming, it means the writing is too boring for you to want to read thoroughly, or it doesn't grasp the attention you find worthy of actually doing so. But, despite this, you continue to skim, wasting hours of your time.

….Really?

As an author, this is a major slap in the face. I can't even begin to tell you the countless hours I've spent plotting and planning my story. My story is the kind of story where you must read thoroughly to understand everything that is happening. If you're taking three minutes per chapter, you're not getting the entire story, and you won't be able to fully appreciate it. There's nothing more heartbreaking than watching all of your hard work negated because someone is too lazy to read through the entire chapter.

I'm sure this sounds like me doing nothing more than whining and moaning, and for that I apologize. I think my tooth pain is making me a little more emotional than normal. However, there is a point to my rant. I'm hoping people who skim may one day read this and perhaps think twice about skimming. It makes a big difference, it really does.

Because skimming takes away the entirety of the read; the entirety of the story. Readers can't fully appreciate or judge a story if they don't read the whole thing. No one ever starts a television show in the middle of an episode (if given the choice), and if you purchase a book, I don't really see the point of barely reading it.

As a reader, some of my absolute favorite books are those that carry subtleties of characterization, whether they be the thoughts of the main, or their interactions and dialogue exchanges with other characters. Sometimes both. If I skimmed, I would miss a lot of this. I might also find that without the aforementioned components, I wouldn't like the rest of the story much.

Lastly, skimming is the most inefficient method of reading for all parties involved. Not only do you waste the author's precious time of creating something that was meant to be fully read and enjoyed, you also waste your time because you've most likely cheated yourself of all the enjoyment the story could have given you, had you read the entire thing.

And, if you're finding yourself skimming despite knowing all that I've mentioned, then you shouldn't even be reading it at all, because if a book does not hold your entire attention, you should stop wasting your time with it and find one that does.

So exactly what am I trying to say? I may have lost you in the rather abrupt and random switch from my infected wisdom tooth to why I disapprove of skimming. I really tried to be clever and sort of lead into the real topic at hand, but I probably failed since it's seven o'clock in the morning and I've yet to go to sleep due to my searing tooth pain. Therefore, allow me to summarize my point in a single sentence:

Be a reader; not a pseudo-reader. It saves everyone's time.

Okay, that was two sentences, but whatever.

 

"You cannot step into the same river twice."

- Heraclitus (Diogenes Laertius, Lives)

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headline image by Jeff Carter