Reading and re-reading and writing

I need to read, both in the genres I write in and outside them. Just read; fill my head with other people's works and ideas and styles and themes. I need the escape that other writers can provide, to be in their reality for awhile, to get off my own frenetic mental hampster wheel. (You needed that earworm, didn't you?)

I need to refill my well creatively with other worlds and art, and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is to read.

I chug books. Wednesday night around 9 p.m. I picked up Sara Paretsky's Ghost Country and finished it around 2 a.m.*; my hardcover copy is 386 pages.

I hear other people talking about re-reading books and am generally nonplussed. Also uneasy; I know I should re-read, especially give how quickly I gulp fiction. How else can I truly appreciate the work that the author has done, the careful phrasing, the way a character has been developed, a setting drawn? But my motivation for reading is to find out what happened. Once I know how things turn out, it's hard to invest the time to go back. The escape I get from fiction is never as strong, never as visceral the second time. I'm an emotional reader; I sink into the action and absorb the feelings and experiences of the characters. (Which is why horror is generally just right out).


When I read a book without a strong plot line, like Angélica Gorodischer’s fantastic Kalpa Imperial, I do much better to read it aloud in chunks; otherwise I have trouble and put it down.


I've been doing so much re-reading of my own stuff while revising that the last thing I want to do is revisit somebody's else's. I might embed it too deeply. I'm terrified I'll use other people's phrases, ideas, concepts, plots without recognizing them. Daily, that self-doubt revisits. This phrase that is so familiar now -- am I sure it's really mine?  It's too smooth, too clean, I must have stolen it without realizing it. Could I have read it somewhere else?

And yet, to come full circle, when I am tied in knots about my own plots and wording, reading someone else's work -- particularly writing that is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted, and/or sensually evocative -- takes me out of my self-absorption and refills me with delight for the written word. That enthusiasm and appreciation in turn motivates me to become a better writer myself.

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*  I sometimes wonder how authors who spend years on a novel feel when they hear readers say things like that. I know I despair at times -- I'm spending days on this scene, if I count all the revisions, probably weeks, and a reader is going to blip through this in minutes. Why can't I revise it faster?