The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time – and return comments. This group is all about connecting!
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
March 3 question – Everyone has a favorite genre or genres to write. But what about your reading preferences? Do you read widely or only within the genre(s) you create stories for? What motivates your reading choice?
Up until a few years ago my reading preference was single-minded: Fantasy.
I hadn’t even thought seriously about writing a book, so that wasn’t part of the equation. When I went to find reading material, I went straight to the fantasy section and that was it.
Then came the day that I was browsing in my local library and I saw Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches. The cover drew my attention, the blurb reeled me in and I took it with me. A crack appeared in my fantasy-hardened reading focus.
Now with all of the publicity surrounding the tv show based upon that book, you probably know something about it. Maybe only that there is magic in it, so there is a fantastical element present—I didn’t really stray that far.
But that was just the beginning. I blew through the All Souls series, fell completely in love with it, and had the worst book hangover ever after I was done.
I wanted more. I wanted more alternate history stories. I wanted to see where authors’ imaginations take them when historical events are the prompts.
That was the beginning of my obsession with historical fiction set in Europe.
If I look at it critically, it really shouldn’t have surprised me as it did. I have always gravitated toward European history prior to 1900, those are the elective classes I took and what I enjoyed learning about at any point in school. I even took history classes when I studied in Ireland for a year.
Even this time period restriction has eased, though. My current audiobook binges are all set in England and Europe around both World Wars.
Next came my offer to read a novel as a beta reader for a friend in a Facebook group.
Splash. I fell into steampunk.
Wow, is that a fun genre! I binged that for months, filling my Kindle with its brassy, mechanical tales swathed in multi-layered skirts, clockworks, and evening suits. It has become my go-to for a fun, adventurous, mechanically magical page-turner.
With fantasy being my first and steadfast love, that is what I want to write first. I’m well on my way to doing that, publishing a blog series with the worldbuilding for my created world while I work on sorting through the elements of the main story that stumbles around in my brain.
But every so often, the idea of delving into a historical fiction story or a some-kind-of-punk mystery raises its hand and my writer-brain wants to take a ditch-dive into the ‘shiny new thing.’ One day, yes, I will do it. But first things first.
I also honor my true love of books and bookstores, gravitating toward titles about libraries, bookshops, scrolls, and the like, which has led me to some contemporary fiction. Then there’s paranormal (give me a vampire any day, go ahead, bite me, please!) and the many, many YA and NA (new adult) books I’ve enjoyed.
I guess I do ready sort of widely. Somewhat. I’ve tried murder mysteries, thrillers, cozy mysteries, and women’s fiction, too. It’s all been fun.
Since I’ve branched out, I’ve realized that I do have moments when I want something specific, a certain tone or type of story, and I can usually find it in my TBR list (which is endless).
Covers do draw me in, as a first contact point, or repel me. In fact, I find that the current trend of putting close-up images of people on the covers does nothing for me. It’s fine if there is a character depicted, but what else is there? Symbols, landscapes, buildings, books, what else is there to draw my attention and make me pick up the book to read the blurb? That’s what piques my curiosity and what I want to see in my mind when I read.
I know expanding my reading genres has expanded my ability as a writer and storycrafter. It has to. It’s part of the alchemy that happens in the brain when it is exposed to story. It takes all the bits of inspiration and craft and scrambles it up together to put out my unique author voice.
We are all influenced by what we read. It is important to acknowledge and accept that, even embrace it because that’s how writers learn and develop. Nonfiction that teaches writing craft is excellent, but reading identifies all of those principles in action and helps to inspire our minds to weave them into our own tales.
So yes, read. Read your own genre profusely. But try not to ignore others. You never know which phrase from a horror thriller will be the spark for the reaction that creates your plot twist.
Reading expands our minds and imaginations, fills the creative well. Reading creates inspired writers.~
The Sun, a Book, and a Dog 