Reading

I can stop harping on about the internet and the Mac now. All fixed. It’s time to retire off the old PC and get to love the Mac.

I’ve been reading my first draft. I made the gargantuan mistake of reading Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn at the same time. Not simultaneously, obviously, because that would be impossible. During the day when I was working I read my draft and then when I’d stopped work I’d read One Good Turn. Talk about inferiority complex. I got quite depressed.

When I finished One Good Turn (particularly loved the opening scenes) I started Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This is a futuristic, YA novel set in a dystopian US, way out of my genre but one of the blogs I read (I’m sorry I don’t know which one) recommended it as a good example of tension on every page. Son had read it and I like to keep up a bit with what he enjoys so I put it on my pile to read, not really thinking I’d get around to it. Yesterday, I picked it up and started it but it was so… well, not my thing that after a few pages I thought I’d just read a bit to have a look at the way Collins had achieved the tension … and do you know only a few pages later, before I knew it, I couldn’t put it down.

Isn't it funny how a book can creep up on you like that?

To talk or not to talk

After Leigh’s recommendation at the weekend, on Monday I found a copy of ‘Teach Yourself: how to write a Blockbuster’ by Lee Weatherly and Helen Corner. I’m not sure I’m aiming exactly at the blockbuster market, but I reckon some things - great storylines, ace hooks etc - go down well in any genre. Not to mention of course, that I’m utterly addicted to ‘How to’ books… and you can always learn something.

In it, Weatherly says that one shouldn’t talk too much about what you’re writing – new writers tend to, and professional writers don’t. Inexperienced writers, having talked to all and sundry, sit down to write it and ‘they’ve talked it out of their system.’ I so understand what she means, and I don’t, on the whole, talk much about mine – though you’ll all know I’ve dropped little snippets on my blog lately. But I had something I wanted to talk to Leigh about on Sunday (will the reader accept this?) and I’ve talked to my Mum since I’ve been in the UK and I’ve found it helps to talk a bit. While I talk, I realise things … and it does help that they don’t mind when my face glazes over and I say ‘Oh my god, she thinks the baby is his…’

And then I’m all inspired again and I have to disappear to write some more …

I just wish I could bottle this feeling - how much money would I make? And I could use it for the next time I'm in dumpsville.

Books and Reading

I am forever coming here and saying ‘Oooh, I’ve had an epiphany…’ I think it might be because I’m a bit dim so as my synapses clunk and grind the truth emerges, slowly into my foggy brain and where I think it’s a revelation actually it’s just the truth dawning on a bit of a twit: Doh.

Anyway, I’ve been reading over the last few weeks, as I think we all do and I’m feeling a bit more confident about what kind of book I’m writing (really, really slowly). I’m no longer enjoying reading certain genres so the reading of late has crystallized what I don’t want to write. I had been a bit torn and it was something else to stop me writing (anything'll do; got any good ideas to stop me writing? Leave 'em in a comment and I'll get onto them immediately!)

I’ve spent all day websiting, then I went to school to see Bugsy Malone and now I’m going to get into bed with The Gathering by Anne Enright, which I’m more than half way through and loving.

Oh, and no, I'm not planning to write a The Gathering type of book.

Writers and Readers

A writer must be a voracious reader – is that agreed?

And they must read widely in the genre in which they write. Not gone wrong yet?

Well, I also know from the lists of ‘meme’ books (though being a bit stupid, I’m uncertain what meme means…) doing the blog-rounds that most of us novel racers reads (or has read) widely. Sometimes that’s been while studying and sometimes for pleasure (or book groups AND they really AREN’T always the same thing…)

(Oh dear, I‘m overindulging with parentheses somewhat today.)

What happens then if you are uncertain where your story fits in your pattern of reading? Does that matter? Do you not worry until well and truly established on your book? Wouldn’t you write differently for two different genres? Or do you attempt to write the way you write (find your voice – damn, there I go again) and it finds its way into the right genre?

Or am I just avoiding the writing again?