Tuesday, May 10, 2011

This Literary Rat's hitting, or rather, I mean "Reading" The Books, This Time,With Joy!!

As many of my writer friends know, I've had a hard time reading books without either jealousy or feelings of inferiority cloud my judgement. Many warned me to start putting my self-pity in check, and they were right, but it just took a long time to get there, but I have and I'm ready to fight back!


I've got a lot of reading to catch up on, and I don't mean books on craft (Though I need all the help I can get with query letters!) but actual books. The novels, Poetry, and nonfiction books I was not able to enjoy because trying to improve my craft like I did, came at the price of not reading like I should, and used to before query letters broke my resolve more than once the last two years.

I know many writers do well thinking about books in this manner, many of my favorite writers go by their own version of the self-study method, but for me, it just makes the frustrations I already felt even worse. For me, books I read for me, and not for school, need to be fun and engage my interests.


I have to first read to enjoy it, and maybe after I can find some technique I can use to help my writing.

But first and foremost, I have to enjoy the book I'm reading, the books that made me decide to be a writer in the first place. I lost touch with that part of myself for too long, when I struggled so hard to fix my weaknesses, but I've got it back and I'll make D*** sure I'll never lose it again.

I'll explain more on what I'm doing differently for the better later on today.

Until Then,
May the Fantastic Fauna Be With You

Taurean

2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for the Fantastic Fauna! I am glad to hear your inspiration to read has come back! I definitely had a period in my life, a few years after college and around the time that I had my first child that there just seemed to be no time to read books, and I had no motivation to make the time.

    All the best! Hope you'll share both what you're reading and writing!!

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  2. Thanks for stopping by to comment, Miranda. Though I'm not as far in my education as I'd like to be, nor do I have a family to raise, I still have lots on my to do list to juggle.

    Reading stopped being an automatic and fun thing to do when books I didn't write felt like rivals I couldn't equal or surpass, and I know we get told this is not the case, once we go from writing to selling our writing, it does, and we can't pretend that's not true.

    But I'm getting better with that. Trying to, anyway...

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