Bad reading habits. Bad writing habits.
My awful reading habits:
I devour books. I'm a speed reader by nature. Even when I try to slow down I end up racing to the epilogue. I don't care much for detail or conversation. I just have to know how it ends. I need my story fix.
My process:
1. Read it fast, read it now.
2. Anyone who distracts me is risking life and limb. As a teen I was serious skilled at two things. While I read I could hold conversations. (The second is that I could sleep with my eyes open. It was great for boring classes.) I can't do either any more. Sigh.
3.Skip the boring bits.
I was an author's nightmare incarnate. I disregarded whole paragraphs (and sometimes chapters when I was very naughty) that they spent hours or days or months or years writing. And I didn't care.
The worst part? I still do it.
I try not to. But I have limited free time and I don't want to know about the colour of the sun in exact details as it climbs over the oh-so-described hills with various wild-flowers listed. I don't want to know about the animals of said hillside bleating/chewing/howling/quaking/glaring at everyone. I just don't.
So I won't read it.
I'm not all bad though. Once I read a book once and like it, I'll read it again. Then I'll enjoy the actual writing. I'll look at sentence structure and phrases I like/don't like. I'll read slowly and enjoy the dialogue and the characters. If I like the book.
I have another habit when reading that many people I know hate. I won't call it a bad habit though, because in my eyes it's not.
I like to read the last line in a novel before I read the first. Sometimes I read the whole last paragraph if I need to make sense of the last line. Then as I go along I try to guess how they got to that last line. It's fun.
I'm strange like that.
My awful writing habits:
This is a much longer list.
1. Falling head-over-ass in lust with an idea too early and too easily.
2. I'm a book two-timer. I'm always working on more than one thing and often have flings with ideas while my ever-so-patience novel waits for me to come back.
3. I either plot out every single detail until I lose all enthusiasm for the book OR have no idea what I'm writing until it's already written-which means re-writes.
4. I hate re-writes.
5. I love/hate editing. I used to sub-edit in a magazine and did journalism in college so I had to get over it. However, editing an article is not the same as editing a novel. There's a different style involved. I also can't afford to spend my whole time editing. The stuff I have written would be the best stuff ever and it wouldn't matter because it's not finished.
6. I'm bad at finishing things. Very, very bad. I have over 80 ideas for novels, novellas and short stories. Sorry. Make that over 81. (A story about a girl who is attending the wedding of her birth parents who gave her up because "they'd never last as a couple and couldn't handle being single parent(s)" flashed before my eyes. I just have to inject magic there somewhere.)
...Bad C. BAD!
7. I can't read and write. I end up mimicking the style or the author I'm reading. No joke, for ages after I finished a certain Jane Austen book everything I wrote was very good if I lived in the same time period as her.
This is why I haven't updated the blog in a few days. I've been reading. Which isn't shirking on my duties because you have to read lots if you want to write.
...well you do.
...I guess I could have....but....but
Stephen King said so!
Have to listen to the King.
He's not a guru, he's a monarch of the writing world. It's right there in his name.
-C.
Anyone have any interesting habits for when they read/write? Do you mimic too? Can you do both at the same time without affecting your writing 'voice'? If so, please share how with me.
I devour books. I'm a speed reader by nature. Even when I try to slow down I end up racing to the epilogue. I don't care much for detail or conversation. I just have to know how it ends. I need my story fix.
My process:
1. Read it fast, read it now.
2. Anyone who distracts me is risking life and limb. As a teen I was serious skilled at two things. While I read I could hold conversations. (The second is that I could sleep with my eyes open. It was great for boring classes.) I can't do either any more. Sigh.
3.Skip the boring bits.
I was an author's nightmare incarnate. I disregarded whole paragraphs (and sometimes chapters when I was very naughty) that they spent hours or days or months or years writing. And I didn't care.
The worst part? I still do it.
I try not to. But I have limited free time and I don't want to know about the colour of the sun in exact details as it climbs over the oh-so-described hills with various wild-flowers listed. I don't want to know about the animals of said hillside bleating/chewing/howling/quaking/glaring at everyone. I just don't.
So I won't read it.
I'm not all bad though. Once I read a book once and like it, I'll read it again. Then I'll enjoy the actual writing. I'll look at sentence structure and phrases I like/don't like. I'll read slowly and enjoy the dialogue and the characters. If I like the book.
I have another habit when reading that many people I know hate. I won't call it a bad habit though, because in my eyes it's not.
I like to read the last line in a novel before I read the first. Sometimes I read the whole last paragraph if I need to make sense of the last line. Then as I go along I try to guess how they got to that last line. It's fun.
I'm strange like that.
My awful writing habits:
This is a much longer list.
1. Falling head-over-ass in lust with an idea too early and too easily.
2. I'm a book two-timer. I'm always working on more than one thing and often have flings with ideas while my ever-so-patience novel waits for me to come back.
3. I either plot out every single detail until I lose all enthusiasm for the book OR have no idea what I'm writing until it's already written-which means re-writes.
4. I hate re-writes.
5. I love/hate editing. I used to sub-edit in a magazine and did journalism in college so I had to get over it. However, editing an article is not the same as editing a novel. There's a different style involved. I also can't afford to spend my whole time editing. The stuff I have written would be the best stuff ever and it wouldn't matter because it's not finished.
6. I'm bad at finishing things. Very, very bad. I have over 80 ideas for novels, novellas and short stories. Sorry. Make that over 81. (A story about a girl who is attending the wedding of her birth parents who gave her up because "they'd never last as a couple and couldn't handle being single parent(s)" flashed before my eyes. I just have to inject magic there somewhere.)
...Bad C. BAD!
7. I can't read and write. I end up mimicking the style or the author I'm reading. No joke, for ages after I finished a certain Jane Austen book everything I wrote was very good if I lived in the same time period as her.
This is why I haven't updated the blog in a few days. I've been reading. Which isn't shirking on my duties because you have to read lots if you want to write.
...well you do.
...I guess I could have....but....but
Stephen King said so!
Have to listen to the King.
He's not a guru, he's a monarch of the writing world. It's right there in his name.
-C.
Anyone have any interesting habits for when they read/write? Do you mimic too? Can you do both at the same time without affecting your writing 'voice'? If so, please share how with me.
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