I often offer up advice on this blog: advice for writers, and advice for editors. Today’s tip is for both. It’s going to sound blatantly obvious, but it’s no less important for it.
Today’s advice is: read. Read for fun.
Read your genre. Get a feel for the latest trends. Read outside your genre and open yourself up to something completely new. Get a book referral from a friend or let a review grab your eye. Browse a bookstore and give in to the urge to thumb through something with an attention-getting cover. Read things that have nothing to do with what you write, what you edit, or who you work with.
A love of reading is what got most of us where we are. It’s what made us want to work with words, to shape and craft and polish them into the kinds of works we grew up with and treasured. But any time you try to turn a passion into work, you risk losing the passion that sparked you toward the field of work in the first place.
As a professional, it behooves you to keep up with the market, to know the new releases, to be familiar with the works in your genre. If you need to tell yourself that at first to justify taking a break from your own to-do list and setting aside some time for leisure, then go ahead. But be wary, because that turns it into work and justifies it as work. Allow that mindset for the first book or two, but wean yourself off it when you can.
Those of us in the publishing industry often have to read so much for work that we stop reading for fun. We’re too busy, or we’re too tired of staring at words by the end of the day, or we can’t turn that editing impulse off enough to enjoy it.
Do it anyway. You’ll be surprised how good it feels. There’s no comparison between reading for work and reading just for fun. It’s like coming in out of a cold rain and soaking in a steaming hot tub. It’s still water, just like the rain is, but it’s different. It’s specifically intended to soothe, and it does.
Does it seem strange to think of a good book as a cure for a day spent in the slush pile? Maybe it is. But don’t dismiss it until you’ve tried it. Let it remind you how much talent and how much potential is out there, in others and also in you. Let it relax you, and you might subconsciously drift and resolve the plot point or turn of phrase that’s been giving you trouble. You might come away from a good book encouraged and refreshed, with a renewed sense of purpose of your own.
Reconnect with what drew you to reading in the first place, and you’ll likely connect better with your own readers, too.
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