Julie is a Midwestern wife, a homeschooling mother of 3, and an all around caffeine addict. She’s also an unpublished author blogging her journey to publication at Musings from the Slush Pile, where she shares writing tips, author interviews, personal experience, and opening chapters from her works.
Welcome Julie.
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Reading is Like Eating Chocolate and Losing Weight
Writing is a “Binge/Purge Situation.” Some of you may prefer the feast/famine expression, but either will work.
As people with lives outside of writing, we’re limited on the time needed to pursue our dream of publication. For this reason, writing becomes a push (it aside) and pull (it back in front of you) part of life.
When you do have time, what do you attend to first? Aspiring writers do so much more than just write. We plot and scheme, then write and edit. We offer pages up to betas (dedicated readers) and make changes. We offer to beta for others. We read countless agent and editor blogs, books on writing, and take courses to learn and hone our craft.
Writers are blogging and jumping feet-first into social media, hoping to establish a web-presence. Some of us even do our share of guest blogs. We want to meet other writers, unite and network. It takes a real time commitment to stay on top of such an ever-changing industry.
There’s almost no time left to read or write. We have to prioritize the time in between our real lives.
So, how is the time best spent when we have so little of it? I find that the first thing I drop is reading. In fact reading is my biggest binge/purge situation. I will devour a novel a day for weeks on end and then, nothing for two or three months. I try to write every day, but there isn’t always time left over to read.
Reading is more important to writers than some realize. I was guilty of that train of thought for a long time. I’ve always read because I love words, but I didn’t consider how it affected my writing, or what my work would be like without it until my betas began comparing my prose to some of my favorite authors.
Reading is research and refinement and inspiration. It makes sense that we pick up our favorite phrases, new words, or mimic voices that speak to us. I’m inspired by reading. I know exactly what I love and why I love it, then I apply those concepts to my work and it shows.
Additionally, if you’re not reading in your genre then you can’t know what’s selling. You’re missing an incredible opportunity to learn. Those books have sturdy hard covers at the library for a reason. An editor bought them. Something inside was “right.”
So, if you’re like me and are in the famine part of your reading cycle, take a minute to look at the new releases getting all the buzz then go pick them up. Enjoy the ride then take a little something you can use with you.
To a writer, reading is the equivalent of eating chocolate to lose weight. Where else can you get such enjoyment and self improvement all in one?
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Thanks Julie. I love how you compare reading to eating chocolate and losing weight.
No reading famine here.
