About a half hour ago, BigGirl and her BFF Miss Ally raided my bookshelves for summer. Ally recently lost her father, and the spring has been tough. BigGirl has been loaning her books--that great escape. What I love about Miss Ally is that her goal is to become an editor. She's working this summer in NYC, as an intern for some groovy Music Magazine Of Note. She's smart. She's fun. She's a little bit broken. And BigGirl is prying open her friend's previously locked door to 'reading can be fun'. Miss Ally spent the year reading for personal edification (which is always A GOOD THING) but now, she's reading to recover. To rebuild. Reading as a way to lighten up--and find her way.
Anyway. I have the stack of books on the coffee table, right here, as the girls soak up the first sunshine we've had in weeks and dip in our freezing pool, I thought I'd share Miss Ally's stash.
Lamb--Christopher Moore
Cry Wolf--Tami Hoag
Two for the Dough--Janet Evanovich
Into the Storm--Suze KICK ASS Brockmann
Say Goodbye--Lisa Gardner
Eye of the World--Robert Jordan
Absolutely Normal Chaos--Sharon Creech
Welcome to Temptation--Jenni Crusie
The Truth--Terry Pratchett
It's just a stack of books. Sitting here at my feet, when I'm neck deep in my own writing. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing this for. Why the endless time at the computer, trying to hobble together these tiny, silly stories, working on my cra(p)ft. I mean, there's already a world of really important books out there, and lots of folks who need to read them.
What am I doing?I read an author interview a few months back, and the writer stated ( adamantly) that writers need to read voraciously to understand their craft. I felt so guilty because I barely read at all now. I find myself unable to finish even the shortest of stories and the tiniest reading I do manage has become technical in nature (boo) . I was a little twisted up about my perceived failure to act as a 'real writer'.
That's not to say I don't understand that author's point. You really can't know how good writing works unless you read actively.
And then I realized that I'd been voraciously reading since the fourth grade, when life became complicated and I picked up
A Cricket in Time Square. I read at the expense of everything else. Even when I was a terrible teenager, hitchhiking to Cars concerts and drinking down at the reservoir with those terrible boys, I was the strange girl with
To Kill A Mockingbird or
Ashes in the Wind in my bag. Nobody understood that. I'd cut class, go sit on the green, smoke a Newport Light---not as an act of rebellion, but so I could finish
Breakfast of Champions or Giants in the Earth. I read the complete works of Shakespeare. I read all of Vonnegut and Hardy, Hemminway, Faulkner, Woodiwiss. I read Mists of Avalon enough times the year I turned twenty, that I wore out the binding. I read Heinlein and Frank Miller. Chaucer. Voltaire. Fern Michaels. Joyce. Junie B. Jones. I went to all the continents, some of the planets, a few stars. I traveled time. I dined with Kings. I fell in love. I met God.
The written world held not only a place to hide, villains I could identify, friends I could keep-- it also held keys to the strange and difficult real world I inhabited.
I read for 39 years. Straight. Maybe there was an occasional lag, but even then I'd just switch genres or read poetry, plays, books on history, politics, parenting, art, comic books, cereal boxes, porn. I'd read anything. Everything. Any real reader knows that the heady reality is: there's always so much more out there to read, always more to learn, folks to meet, places to go.
Anyway. I read until last year, when I started writing. I think I must be resting. I think maybe...I'm so afraid of accidentally losing my voice, or confusing my voice, that my need now is to say something of my own...how ever half baked it is, that passion to hear a story, has turned into a passion to tell a story. And now when I'm reading, I'm only doing it to improve my Mad Skilz. Reading has become technical.
Anyway. That's what I was thinking about this morning, you know?
But that need to read turned into this need to tell. I'm as lost in the process of creating, and find it as revealing and as expansive, as I ever was in the act of reading. Which is a startling revelation today, this fifth of July.
That's my post. One week until I leave for RWA--with a new book nearly finished.
