On Writing and Reading

            Lately, with the amount of reading and writing I’ve been doing I’ve noticed a few things that have changed about myself and my writing style, and a few things that just haven’t. I started thinking about it when I was reading a few blogs by other authors about getting into writing routines and how they go about it.

            First off, I read – a lot. Lately it’s been very far out of my genre. No vampires. No werewolves. I’ve been reading things like The Golden Compass, Watership Down, Black Beauty, Alice and Wonderland, It’s Not Just About the Hair, and a few text books about writing and publishing (hey, you can always benefit from that!).

The less I’ve been reading in the genre that I write, the more I’ve found myself wanting to write it. I pick up tidbits of inspiration from what I read and while I’ve never been afraid of plagiarizing anything unknowingly, I sometimes get so caught up in the “been there, done that” and stop writing entire manuscripts because they feel old or worn because someone else has done something somewhat like it.

The more I read outside the lines, the more easily I can write. I’m surprising myself with what I’m reading lately with no Internet and no television. I like it.

As far as my actual writing style and routine, they’ve been morphing quite a bit too. I’ve been working on dialog a lot. After reading my own writing and really listening to the way people talk, it dawned on me that the way I’m writing is too formal for how a person would actually speak. I wish someone would have pointed it out to me earlier. So, I’ve been working on that a lot.

My routine hasn’t changed much though. I’m kind of a nit picker when it comes to how and where I can write. My brain will shut down if things aren’t the way it needs them to be. It’s the difference of really being in “the zone” and a few hundred words vs. a few thousand.

As strange as it might sound, when the lights are out and I’m in a small, dark room facing westward or locked inside a bathroom sitting on the floor in the dark I can write around two thousand words in an hour, and that’s on the low end. I type like a maniac! If things are too hot, too stuffy, or I don’t have a glass of water with me or it’s too bright my word count decreases dramatically.

I guess that it’s really just a matter of focus. Well, speaking of focus, I should get back to writing. I want to churn out another three thousand words today other than this blog.

Toodles!