Close reading, close writing

Close reading:
Joan Didion relates how one summer she and her husband John 'fell into a pattern of stopping work', i.e. writing,

at four in the afternoon and going out to the pool. He would stand in the water reading (he reread Sophie's Choice several times that summer, trying to see how it worked) while I worked in the garden.

The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005.

Close writing:
Kevin Kizer relates how Hunter S. Thompson

had an interesting way of studying the writers he loved. He would take and transcribe their works on his typewriter in an effort to discover each writer's particular rhythm and flow. He typed 'The Great Gatsby' and 'A Farewell To Arms' in their entirety.

(Academics might want to work in a similar vein, says Thomas Basbøll, in order to shift their focus into their fingers.)