So since becoming an author, I have to say I’ve become a horrible reader! I used to read so many books in a month (no joke I averaged about a book a day and I’m talking full length novel nothing short) and then I started writing and the world in my head just became more interesting.
In the beginning this was great because *gasp* look how much money I was saving! Then I had to buy cover art and now I’m looking at ISBN’s and yeah, not so cheap anymore… but whatever! My point is, I stopped reading other people’s stuff. Granted that was also in part because I’d read everything that had interested me and I was stalled out, waiting for the next book in the series.
Just so happens that two of the author’s I’ve been keeping up with released books about a week apart…
But but but! I whined in my head… I’m writing!
No joke, I’m in the middle of writing the 3rd Sacred Hearts MC novel and I was afraid that if I picked up these two books, never mind they aren’t even the same genre, that I was going to loose my ‘voice’ and it was going to ruin what I was writing as a result… Even though I was hitting a wall on where to go next with the story.
The siren’s call, it was too much, I read the damned books. Devoured one right after the other in two days then sat down looking at the blinking cursor in front of me and wouldn’t you know it? The opposite of my fears had come true. I plowed through my little wall and wrote close to two chapters in one sitting and stopped, not because I didn’t know where to go but because, damn it, I needed sleep!
So here I am today, writing in my blog to immortalize this moment.
Sometimes, when you hit a wall you need to stop fretting and you need to stop chasing yourself around inside your own head trying to force the story to appear.
Put down the pen or fold up the laptop, go read something else, go watch a movie, go immerse yourself in someone else’s creativity for a minute and come back refreshed.
Do I think that either book I read has influenced my story so far?
Nope. Not a bit. Opposite worlds and all of that.
Do I think I need to put down the blog, step away from it slowly and go write some more reader’s crack? Yes, yes I do, because wouldn’t you know it? I have a fan. A fan. At least one fan! But hey look at that! There is at least one person that I know of that is out there reading my books as fast as I can write them being entertained by what I’ve written and that is what I am in this for, why I do it. So I am extremely grateful to know that I have a fan that wants more so I’m going to get back to it and give them just that… more.
So… Later!
~A.J.