Posts Tagged ‘reading’

It should come as no surprise that reading is a huge part of my writing process.  I’m a compulsive reader, so any word that comes around my eyes will get read at some point.  What surprises me is the breadth of work that helps me through my own writing.  I tend to approach nonfiction like fiction and vice-versa.

Though some complain that reading like a writer is exhausting or depressing, I find it particularly pleasurable.  What’s the voice?  How is the story told?  What details catch the writer’s attention and which are jettisoned?  What about subject matter…what brings the author closer to the story?  What does the actual page look like?  Are the sentences dense or curt or do they vary?  I try to let myself get swept up in the story, but once I’m done, I look back on the experience and try to glean some broader lessons. 

My day job is marketing and brand strategy, and it brings a lot of nontraditional reading material my way.  I inhale everything from long-form investigative journalism to tweets about Britney Spears’s boobs.  Both help me look at words and information in a different way.  Add in some biographies and a few Georgette Heyer novels and you’re just about right. 

I can’t imagine wanting to write without my ongoing reading habit, nor can I imagine being the writer I am/becoming without reading widely and curiously.  For some reason, I’m not worried about other voices imbuing themselves in my writing.  I really can’t afford to miss a thing. 

What about you?  How does reading fit into your writing process? 

As the dog days of summer pull us further into the world of reading, it’s time for some communal book bliss. 

It’s time for the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong! 

Discover (or reacquaint yourself with) Margaret Mitchell’s perennial classic, which turns 75 this year.  It’s a chunkster, to be sure, but it’s also a hotbed of romance, scandal, historical detail and roiling controversy…and it features one of literature’s most petulant and complex heroines. 

How It Works

To participate, just tell me you plan to read along in the comments below.  Then procure a copy of the classic and start reading.  We’ll meet here on the blog on the following schedule to discuss the book in parts.  I’ll summarize each part and include historical background and fun ways to approach the book as a conversation-starter…then we’ll discuss in the comments.  And I’ll be giving away GWTW-inspired prizes to make this summer read even juicier!

The Schedule*

• August 1: Discuss Part 1 (Chapters 1-7)
• August 15: Discuss Part 2 (Chapters 8-16)
• September 5: Discuss Part 3 (Chapters 17-30)
• September 26: Discuss Part 4 (Chapters 31-47)
• October 17: Discuss Part 5 (Chapters 48-63)

*Due to the chunkster nature of this novel, I’ve broken our group reading down into five parts.  You’ll have two weeks to read the first two parts, and three weeks to read each subsequent part.  But buyer beware…this book just might be hard not to read in one feverish, fell swoop! 

Are You In?

Please introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from and whether you’ve read the book before.  Happy reading!

 

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I’m at loose ends these days.

Between the usual summer rush of entrepreneurship, my long to-read list, an unfinished novel taunting me from the corner of my desk, and a book to promote, life feels like a hodgepodge more often than not.

Not that I’m complaining…not at all.  This summer has brought all sorts of bookish pleasures, including but not limited to:

 

• A road trip with Eleanor Brown to Salida, Colorado, where we’ll participate in a literary shindig, mountain style
• Further reading encounters with Georgette Heyer, who has made this year all the merrier
• Plans for the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong (still pending)
• Sweet notes and reviews from readers
• The knowledge that the more time I spend on my writing, the closer I get to what I increasingly see as my calling (a capital C is probably necessary here, but it makes me nervous)

How about you? What literary delights are punctuating your protagonist’s summer?

Okay, head ‘splosion happening over here.  I just ran across a GalleyCat post that poses an unthinkable question…should writers read?

I’m going to try to avoid the kneejerk “omfghowcouldyouevensuggestotherwise” and say…

I’ve run into this question before.  Usually it’s coupled with some kind of discussion of the dangers of tainting your voice, style, or goals with the work of another writer.  I myself sometimes limit the genre or amount I am reading while working on certain pieces of writing…it can exert a strange pull that takes me away from myself, not to mention the many procrastinatory dangers of the pile of books that’s sooooo much more tempting than the pile of crap I produce while drafting.

Yes, these are valid reasons to perhaps limit, dampen, or avoid reading in certain situations.  But dear God!  How could you commit words to paper without a love of words, and paper, and books, and libraries, and readers, and escape, and fantasy?  How could you go down the long-ass road to publication, replete with pitfalls, hissy fits, self-doubt, ego crushes, and challenges of every kind, without loving the end result? Not to mention the fact that being at least semi-well-read is even more important once published so that you don’t sound like a complete boor.  Believe me.

We don’t all need to be crazy bibliophiles or even lovers of the classics.  But I’m not sure I want to read anything from a writer without a love of books and the written word and media of all kind and an active, inquisitive, engaged reading habit.

Talk me off the ledge here, friends.  Do you think writers should have an active reading habit?

Today, my friends, is the 75th anniversary of the publication of Gone With the Wind.*

Despite all the well-deserved hoopla (with very worthy press coverage of the amazing Ellen F. Brown’s Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind and even a thrilling upcoming media appearance for yours truly…more on that later), I can’t help but think about my first encounter with the book.

Like most people, I ran into the movie before the book.  I remember Alexandra Dodd’s very ’80s mother sitting us down and telling us we were in for an EVENT.  We watched, were intrigued.  I promptly forgot.  Until sixth grade, when the monotony of my first regular long bus ride set in and I borrowed my mother’s copy.

 

I remember the smell of the bus seat and the bump of the roads, but not as much as I remember the hell of a summer’s day when birthing babies, escaping Atlanta and displaying gumption were on the docket for Scarlett O’Hara.  Little did I know that I was meeting a lifechanger, a book that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I used to carry a battered copy of GWTW in my car, ready for my many solitary lunches, a book I’d open at random or read from cover to cover and then start over again right after reading the end.  I have to pause when writing my own historical fiction to make sure I’m not speaking in Peggy Mitchell’s beautiful prose by mistake (don’t worry, there’s usually no danger of that, especially in a first draft!).

Over the years, I have gone from viewing the book as an adventurous love story to a very adult novel of loss, hubris, trauma, and miscommunication.  I’ve gone from loving Scarlett to hating her and back to love again.  I’ve come to really appreciate Mitchell’s deft characterization, her exhaustive historical knowledge that never feels boring, her ability to show us a hell of a good time while everyone is crying their eyes out. I know that GWTW is a book with a troubled history and a polarizing nature (something I do address in my book and have given a lot of thought to), but I also know that it changed my life as a writer, as a woman, and as a reader.

Thanks for the lifechanger, Margaret Mitchell.

*Well, technically not today, but the beginning of June marks a month of celebration and GWTW-related high-jinks, and besides, the original book was printed in May 1936, which you’ll learn all about in EFB’s book!