On writing: reading

[redgarters]

Maybe it's a sign of how much you've influenced ME, but I could have written the above verbatim! (I'd add @bi_cathy and @CreatingKate to that list.)

I read a lot. At least 2-3 hours a day. Aside from the brilliant Lit writers that have inspired me, I often find myself 'reaching' for things I've read when writing: the poetry of Katherine Phillips and WH Auden; plays by Churchill, Miller and Shakespeare; classics by Austen, Steinbeck and Atwood; modern writers like Emma Robinson and Holly Bourne; and song after song after song.

The OP asked for an example. There's a moment in my very short 'I have seen love' where I wanted to emphasize stillness and I found myself reaching for Steinbeck's cadence when his narrator describes Curry's wife after her death. I wrote:

Steinbeck wrote:

Later in the same story I aped Auden's "Funeral blues":

I have seen love How I love that story, it's absolutely beautiful. I could have added so many author names in there, and you are first on that list T

Same as @THBGato . Could almost copy and paste that paragraph, except that I was already writing but I was focused on the short form, the single scenes that are high on erotism. It was safer to bottle up everything in one or a few short scenes and focus on the height of attraction, and the moments before everything shifts in a relationship.

But reading Wanda, BrokenSpokes, and JC (and briefly helping edit some of JC’s work and seeing her progress behind the scenes) made me realize there was room for much more in erotica. More heart, more complexities, more character development, and more side characters and storylines. They made me want to step outside of that safe zone and try to explore longer stories. That meant changing a lot how I approached writing, what I wrote, and how I wrote things. It also forced me to start writing more smut in my smut, which isn’t always easy for me. My first attempts took 4-5 years to push across the finish line, but it’s become easier/faster since.

I’ll never find the words to explain how much these three influenced my trajectory as a writer.

Reading (and interacting with other writers) is fundamental in gaining the confidence to step outside one's percieved limitations as a writer, in my experience.

As for a concrete example of how reading has infuenced my writing, those Ashley Herring Blake novels inspired me to try to switch pov's. I'd always just done 1st person but decided to try 3rd person pov as a result of reading those books, that handle 3rd beautifully.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I have tendencies toward obsessive behavior and nichedom. Shocking, I know. When I find an author I like, I basically devour everything I can get my hands on. The problem is, I'm also very picky and niche; spectrum life, heyo! There are a great many things I dislike, and only a few things I do. So, when I read for enjoyment, it's a very select catalogue.

But, I also have spent a lot of time reading other people's writings with an eye on providing feedback. That, to me, was about as insightful and eye-opening as anything else. Reading for enjoyment is about immersing yourself in the story, not picking apart style or implicit structures. Reading for feedback requires really digging in and seeing what works, what doesn't, how things works. In essence, popping the hood on a story and rooting around in its guts to see how it's constructed. Doing that, I went back to some of my favorite authors to get a sense for how they operate, and learned quite a lot from that. It makes reading less enjoyable, because it's now focused on tiny things; more about the craft than about the love of reading, but it's an incredibly helpful exercise to see how some of the greats operate. Especially when you read multiple books across the lifetime of their works, seeing how they change and evolve, how they shift voice to tell a story a certain way, what consistent threads exist, the decisions and trimmings and adjustments they make over time as they themselves grew better in their craft (or conversely, lazier and more complacent on their success).

 

[liliput1]

I have tendencies toward obsessive behavior and nichedom. Shocking, I know. When I find an author I like, I basically devour everything I can get my hands on.

I mean isn't nesting behavior a common trait of the archaeopteryx?

But, I also have spent a lot of time reading other people's writings with an eye on providing feedback. That, to me, was about as insightful and eye-opening as anything else.

"By teaching, we learn." - Seneca the Younger

 

[anthrodisiac]

I mean isn't nesting behavior a common trait of the archaeopteryx?

I do line my nests with Terry Pratchett books, just so I can read my favorite pages while I'm sitting on my eggs. A mother's work...

 

[anthrodisiac]

"By teaching, we learn." - Seneca the Younger

This is why I advocate for even newer writers to review other writers' works. It puts their brain in a difference perspective beyond writing or reading. The evaluative process is a very different mindset that can bring a lot of enlightenment when reading through a story with an eye for trying to figure out what is and isn't working. 6 - 12 months is usually when I'd say really start to dig in. I tried nudging people over to Story Feedback, but it's been sparse over there lately.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Modest though you may be, you do have a way with words.

I took this as a compliment on my writing, thank you, then just now I laughed and realized you probably meant it for the actual words I used in my comment:

I am stuck with the little square of ivory I can paint on,

Well yes, it is a pretty good way of expressing a small field of artistry, isn't it? Trouble is, I pinched it from Jane Austen.

In a letter to her nephew she referred to his writings, spirited and full of variety, then said:

How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?

 

[StillStunned]

I'm a stalwart believer in the idea that being a good reader helps make one a good writer.

What makes one a "good reader?"

I think it probably starts with having an open mind. Being willing to see the positives even if you don't like the style, subject matter or message.

If you only read things you know you already enjoy, you're shutting your mind to everything else, and essentially putting up roadblocks to your own improvement.

 

[AG31]

just now I laughed and realized you probably meant it for the actual words I used in my comment:

Yup. Well, that Jane Austen... She just can't be beat!

 

[anthrodisiac]

If you only read things you know you already enjoy, you're shutting your mind to everything else, and essentially putting up roadblocks to your own improvement.

Eh, I do this, and I turned out fine.

...what?

 

[liliput1]

I think it probably starts with having an open mind. Being willing to see the positives even if you don't like the style, subject matter or message.

If you only read things you know you already enjoy, you're shutting your mind to everything else, and essentially putting up roadblocks to your own improvement.

I’m starting to think that this gratitude trend is going to turn out not to be a fad. For reading to make you better I think you have to celebrate the good bits of what you’re reading. Essentially taking the author as a mentor. I really like how he describes skies. How she describes the anxiety of whether the other person likes you back, or if they’re just really nice.

Then you can go Be the Change by repeating it, and adding your own modest set of somewhat original ideas as the sizzle to your borrowed steak.