Why We Need to Write All Five Senses

Or, a writing-related reason to gush about my galleys. Sorry.

The first printed copies of my book. MY BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not great at writing most of the senses. But—for much of my writing life—I didn’t know this.

“Write what you know” is a truism most often applied to subject matter. It’s the reason so many debut novels hew to their authors’ experiences. (D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T. very much included.) Less acknowledged, however, is a deeper fealty to this creed: Writers tend to share not just their lives’ content, but also their form. In other words, our characters interact with the world in the same ways we do. Revising D.J. Rosenblum showed me that a) I had never interrogated, let alone expanded, my sensory landscape, and b) I rely mostly on sight.

To anyone who knows me well, this probably seems ironic. I have terrible vision: When I asked my eye doctor what my equivalent of 20/20 would be, he said, “We don’t calculate that high.” Yet when I shared an early version of D.J. Rosenblum with one of my professors, she told me I had neglected every sense but sight—and she was right. Smell, taste, touch, even hearing (with the exception of dialogue tags): all had fallen past my frame of reference. Why?

There’s a simple, scientific explanation: Sight is the first sense most of us use. Taste and touch require direct contact; not every object has a smell that carries. This leaves sight and hearing vying for the top spot, and the speed of light wins easily—traveling about 300,000 kilometers per second to sound’s mere 340-odd meters.

Taught to be expedient and plot-focused, we writers often end our descriptions after just one sense. But there’s virtue in expanding our descriptive toolkits. The reasons are so self-explanatory, they make me feel dumb:

• Sight may be a primary sense for many of us, but we do use the others—so our characters must, too. (Unless they are differently abled in a specific way that shapes said character’s way of life.)

• Other senses can be more evocative than sight. When describing an object or scene, ask yourself what’s most important for your reader to understand about it. For instance, do they need to know what a trash can looks like? Or do they need to know it’s stinking up the kitchen—and how your characters react to that stench?

• Readers need variety. Most writing involves a lot of description. If we use the same tools every time—senses included—our readers will get bored. You as the writer might, too.

Take one special object as an example: my newly-received advanced reader copies of D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T. I can, and must, describe what one of my ARCs looks like:

The book is thick. Its pages are off-white. On the shiny cover, shades of blue narrow in on a pale-yellow spotlight. Within this circle, we see four young teens, running, led by a smiling girl with dark hair and a green shirt. Behind her leaps the shadow of a goat. This is the lead character of our pink-lettered title: D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T.* (*Some angst anxiety assembly required). The asterisk is a yellow Star of David, a nod to this book’s Jewishness. A red band stretches across the bottom, marking this copy as an “Uncorrected Proof—Not for Sale.”

This description is fine. But if you’ve ever held a book—and, if you’re reading this, I suspect you have—you also know it’s incomplete. So let’s layer in the other senses:

Taste: N/A. Much though I love this book, I will not lick it. (For that matter, including a book’s taste would not help my reader unless I was trying to convey something very strange.)

Smell: My book smells like new paper, surprisingly woody. There’s also a pungency—maybe the gloss? It’s stark, but pleasant. I wonder if this scent will fade or swell with time.

Hearing: My book is silent until I flip the pages. Then, a clean, crisp sound emerges. If I listen closely, I can make out the millisecond thwap of each page against its neighbors—a welcome effect of the thick, high-quality paper my publisher uses. I hear, again, the care in this book’s creation. I think about how well this book will hold up in jostled backpacks, beneath children’s fingerprints.

Touch: This is the sense I write least instinctively. (If any Freudians are reading, please be gentle.) Yet here—as I hold my first book for the first time—it is also, by far, the most essential. The pages’ edges are crisp and smooth. The cover is soft and even, a pleasure to feel against my hands. The book is surprisingly heavy—a tribute, again, to the pages’ thickness. Altogether, touching my book tells me: This is substantial. Not just in my life or in the contours of my career, but in and of itself—a substantive story with a strong spine to match.

See how much more you know about my book now? How many feelings you have about it that sight, alone, could not convey?

You can preorder your own printed copy to experience these feelings firsthand as soon as August. In the meantime, I hope expanding your sensory language enriches your writing—and your life—too.

Abby’s Pop Culture Pop-Up

Over the past month, I’ve watched three very different movies. Here are my one-sentence reviews of them all:

• Picture This (dir. Prarthana Mohan): Wish the story was tighter, love the depiction of modern British Indian culture, and Simone Ashley remains one of the top five most beautiful women in the world.

• No Other Land (dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor): A beautifully made, heartfelt, and upsetting film—even if you’ve previously studied Israeli crimes against Palestinians, as I have—which you should do everything you can to see.

• Grave of the Fireflies (dir. Isao Takahata): A testament to the unique storytelling possibilities of animation, and also the thing that has made me cry more than ??? anything ??? else has since one of my friends literally died.

Not the cheeriest roundup, but hey—that’s what happens during a wannabe dictatorship!

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D.J.’s Digest

Hey, guys. I don’t need to tell you that many things are bad. But we have the potential to make exactly one (1) thing good: Dye the Cuyahoga River green.

Why? It would be fun. And we need fun. And the color green has been scientifically proven to calm us all the heck down.

C’mon, who are we gonna let one-up us? Chicago? Psssh: The Cuyahoga River has caught on fire. Turning green would be in the bottom five of all weird things it has experienced.

We already have the world’s coolest regional sewer department. (And that’s coming from a 14-year-old. Huge compliment.) So let’s get on this, northeast Ohio. The grass may not always be greener—but our water could be.

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Miri’s Music

“Mrs. Robinson” – Simon & Garfunkel

Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It’s a little secret, just the Robinsons’ affair
Most of all, you’ve got to hide it from the kids…

Miri’s relationship with the adult women in her life is, erm, complicated.

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This Month’s Favorites

Precious cargo.

Coziest Coffee Shop goes to… Quill & Crumb Café in the renovated Folger Shakespeare Library. It’s often crowded, but if you can snag a seat, few spaces to work are quite so scenic.

My Kind of Kidlit goes to… Eve and Adam and their Very First Day by Leslie Kimmelman. This beautiful, whimsical picture book has stuck with me long since I read it. I’ve been dismayed to see right-wing religious readers review-bomb this story on the basis that it’s “biblically inaccurate.” I highly recommend this book to any parents looking to introduce their children to a sweet, accessible version of the creation myth.

The Most Excellent Elephant goes to… the elephant book holders my friend Kayla got me a few months ago. (Previously shared in my October newsletter.) Kayla’s gift meant so much to me, I’ve been saving the holders for a special purpose—and I can’t think of anything more special than storing my first copies of D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T.

* Breaking News * … my friend Marcia Brown, a brilliant journalist at Politico, has started her own newsletter! Follow to stay up-to-date on her critical reporting on RFK Jr., agriculture, those vaunted egg prices, and so much more.

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Announcements

Did I mention I got printed copies of my book? I did??? Weird, I totally forgot! In that case, I’ll also tell you that I had a wonderful meeting with my marketing team last week. We’re cooking up some ~ exciting happenings ~ that will start this August…

In the meantime: The next big milestone in D.J.’s journey will be PDFs and e-pubs of the book becoming available on Edelweiss and NetGalley. The publishing industry uses these platforms to share early copies of the book with librarians, booksellers, reviewers, influencers, and assorted other folks who might want to read or buy it—including, potentially, you. Yes, you.

Make sure to subscribe to be the first to know when these editions of D.J. are available!