I’ve noticed that my audience here is predominantly writers and other editors, with a sprinkling of a few friends and fans (hi, mom!). Today I thought I’d pose a question to you, the writers (and editors) who read this blog.
Writers seem to fall into two camps with regard to reading. Most of them love to read, of course. If you didn’t love to read, you’d probably have very little interest in forging a career based on writing things for other people to read. Finding time to read is another matter entirely. That’s a matter of circumstance, and not due to any particular personal philosophy on the issue. The division I’m talking about is more in what writers read.
Some writers read extensively. Some pay particular attention to what’s going on in their own genre, to keep up with the field, with the trends on the bestseller lists, with the hot names and the up-and-coming.
Some writers avoid their genres just as studiously. They may read about the market, but they won’t read the books themselves. They worry that anything they read may soak into their subconsciouses and become accidental fodder for their own creative processes, lessening the originality of their own work.
I can see both sides. I’m curious about your perspective as writers, whether hobbyists or professional. Do you read your genre and keep up with the trends, or do you avoid it to maintain intellectual distance and keep your ideas your own? Please drop me a comment.
I find that most of what I read is either in my genre or related in some way to the topic or era I am reading about. I find that by reading in your genre you will see the trend of what people are writing, and if you read outside of your genre you may find a nice bit of inspiration that will take you on a ride in a new topic.
Reading for authors is an imperative, and I tend to find myself in my genre or something related.
I try to read everything I can get my hands on. I’m a speculative fiction reader. As such, the book I just finished is Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book. Now I’m working on a biography on Nikola Tesla called Wizard.
Both of these books informed me. Willis is an amazing writer, both in creativity and in style. And in studying how she does both, I can then apply those techniques to improve my own writing.
But, if I don’t read outside of my genre, then I won’t have anything to write about. Hence, the Tesla biography.
And then there are things I read that are totally unrelated to my writing, other than studying style, such as Tee Morris’s Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword. It’s fantasy, but only very loosely. Mostly it’s a stylized pulp crime novel.
I write in the genres I do because they were/are the genres I love to read. I have seen “accidental fodder” slip into my early stories so I am wary of it but not enough to stop me reading the books I love. :)
I don’t read as much as I’d like, but when I do, it’s usually either spec. fic, a medieval murder mystery, or historical fiction with a religious connection (a Templar thriller, for example).
Lately however I’ve been diving back into the comic books/graphic novels of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Matt Wagner. Good story-telling is good story-telling, no matter the genre or medium.