Thursday, September 15, 2011

Read. Review. Repeat.

I read this the other day and it just resonated with me: "Author Jay Lake said: "Sadly, being a professional writer significantly interferes with my reading career."

I've always heard that to write well, you need to read voraciously. That's never been a problem for me. Until now.

I've been so obsessed with my own story that I've really only been living in the real world when I had to. Even when I'm doing other things, my brain is still partially devoted to the story. It's been a moment I wake up till the last fuzzy thoughts before sleep kind of thing. Even then I know my brain works on it while I'm asleep, because I've always got solutions for things when I wake up. Unfortunately, while I wait for my lovely, volunteer editors to get back to me, I feel totally lost. I'm still being mommy, wife, housekeeper, ect..., but that exciting world always on the edge of my consciousness has fallen silent while it speaks to other people.

At first, it was awful! Until I realized that I could read.

It has been fabulous to just enjoy reading again. And when I came to a typo or and badly worded phrase, I could just go one without fixing it. OK, sometimes, I mentally fixed it because it drove me crazy not too, but I was able to avoid this the longer I read.

Since I hope to get reviews on my book, I've realized that I should do the same for other indie authors. My first will be for "Deep Blue Secret", by Christie Anderson, which I finished reading yesterday. All right, I just flat out read it yesterday. Christie is a graduate from BYU and this is apparently her first book. I will be posting my review tomorrow here on my blog, and probably on Amazon and Goodreads.com as well.

2 comments:

  1. I'll bet that reading other books than your own also helps you step back a little and then come back refreshed and dedicated.

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  2. I'm a new follower. I love your recent post. Indeed, it's really good to read others' books, other than yours. 'The more you read, the better you write.'

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Cute Flying Pink Bird