Okay, so I've done very little writing since NaNo '09 wrapped. I've written a few things by hand -- a prose-poem kind of thing about Christmas; a little piece of observatory prose; and pages and pages of book reviews -- but my fingers have nary tapped the keyboard of my laptop or Dana for anything other than surfing. But my time has been well-spent.
For I have been ...reading.
Yes the twin Sun to writing for a Writer is Reading. I'm a very uneven reader. My F-i-L and S-i-L are both very consistent readers; always with a book, steadily making their way through stacks of 'books to read' and polishing them off regularly. I've long wanted to be disciplined in my reading like that, but alas -- as with most other areas of my life -- I'm more like a mad dasher.
I can read like a sum'bitch when inspiration hits me. I can devour 300+ page novels in a single day -- and still have the clothes washed and dinner on table -- if I'm really of a mind to. And have, several times. The problem is, I have to 'feel' like it.
That is the single biggest hurdle in my life for anything worthwhile I wish to pursue: I wait for the 'feeling' to hit me. I have to be inspired, motivated, driven to do whatever it is.
For instance, in the month of December after NaNo '09 ended, I devoured eight books. Daniel Silva's latest Gabriel Allon book, The Defector, Brad Thor's The Apostle, Sara Bird's How Perfect is That, P.J. O'Rourke's Peace Kills, Haggai Carmon's Chameleon Conspiracy, Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow, Tim Gautreaux's The Missing, and Michael Connelly's 9 Dragons. I'm rounding out that list by currently reading Steve Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo.
All of the books are very different, although some fall into my currently favorite genre of Thriller/Adventure, and I'm learning a vast deal from all of them about story structure, conflict and tension and characterization. In the rest of my posts for this month, I'm going to examine in detail some of the stuff I think I'm learning.
If the inspiration hits to actually write a post. I wonder if there's any novels out there that can teach me to be consistent and disciplined....
