Monday, January 2, 2012

Why I'm Reading More and Writing Less.

First of all, my blog has gotten a makeover and it looks HOT, amirite? Many thanks to Smitten Blog Designs for the new hotness. I love it!

I've been entering some GoodReads Giveaways for advanced copies of books, and I've actually won a couple. My most recent win was So What? A Single Mom's Guide to Staying Sane in the 21st Century which I don't have too much interest in reading at this time, but I may get around to it sooner or later. I've entered a lot of giveaways with books that have an international focus. In case I win any of those, I'm going to swap out some of my selections for my Around the World in 52 Books reading challenge. Because I'm both cheap and lazy, and free wins out every time.

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A friend of mine pointed out that this blog, on which I had originally intended to document my work as a freelance writer and indie book author, not only has no information about my writing, but instead has a bunch of information about the stuff I'm reading. So there are a few reasons for this, and I'm going to spell them out in list form. Because people love lists. And by "people," I mean "me."

  1. I don't read enough. It's an old adage that to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. The reality is that I used to be a voracious reader, reading books for hours every day. My participation in online sci-fi fandom shifted that a bit, but for many years, I still spent a lot of time reading fan fiction online. Some of it was really, really good, better than many published works I'd written, and some of it was terrible to the point of making me physically cringe. I also wrote quite a lot of it, and benefited from ongoing community discussions, feedback and analysis about writing with other writers, so I don't feel like my time with that was wasted at all. However, since I graduated college and, a couple of years later, stopped participating in online sci-f fandom so much (for various reasons I won't get into here, not the least of which was time management), I altogether stopped reading for a few years. I feel like that's created a sort of intellectual vacuum for me that makes me tremendously uncomfortable, and, I've found, has eroded my confidence in my writing abilities. So I'm reading more to fill up that vacuum again, to engage in "the great conversation" of literature and writing from which I currently find myself so profoundly disengaged.
  2. I need more downtime. I work too hard, y'all, and that is a fact. Currently, I take on odd freelancing gigs through Fiverr, work full time for a mobile gaming startup, and work part-time for a search engine rating company. It's not an unsustainable schedule because it's all from home and I like it all, but I just don't have enough time where I'm sitting around doing nothing except unwinding. I enjoy watching TV, but  I'm a "two-screen viewer" that TV marketers are buzzing about lately. I don't enjoy watching television without also either live-tweeting about it, or chatting online with friends about it, and if I'm in front of my computer, I'm also usually working a little, too. And just being in front of a computer puts my brain in work mode.  So, sitting with a cup of tea or coffee and reading a book is an effective way to just spend some time by myself relaxing and unplugging from the stressors of my daily routine.
  3. I want inspiration. I have the outline to two book series - one a steampunk mystery series and another a young adult novel - as well as three business and technology stand-alone books already written. I've had one done for months, and I just haven't gotten around to doing it. Partly this is because I'm not in the habit of carving out me-time (see #2 above). Partly this is because I'm just no longer in the habit of thinking about producing written works. I'm hoping that by reading and thinking about other people's written works, I can gird my literary loins and get some motivation going in that direction.
  4. I'm so freaking sick of writing, it's not even funny. I've been writing for pay for nearly 3 years, and it's completely sucked the joy out of writing for me. I haven't written the things I like: reviews, entertainment analyses, philosophy, sci-fi, social and political discussions and fun how-tos. I've written for content mills (DemandStudios, TextBroker and others), local newspapers, paid blog posts, ghost-written eBooks, spiffied up people's resumes, wrote content for people's Web pages - you name it. If it needs writing on the Internet, I've probably written it, and I'm just tired of it. It's paid well, but I think I need to immerse myself in the pleasure of the written word again to re-invigorate my love of writing. I know it's in there somewhere! I just need to wake it up from the dead.
So, yes, the blog title still stands, because she still writes - right? But she's reading a lot more, because she wants to be a better writer and expand her horizons. And thinks it's fun to refer to herself in the third person. Also, writing about reading totally counts, so there. :)

1 comment:

  1. I like your new layout. It's very pretty.

    I have people suggest that I should write novels and I would love to give it a try. Your obstacles are mine as well.

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