A Gray Day

Either my mood matches the day or the day matches my mood. I've never quite known which it is. Maybe it's neither, or maybe it's both. One thing I do know is that certain days seem to lend themselves more efficiently to the writing craft, and I spend far too much time deliberating this rather than actually setting words down. (I would once have said setting words "to paper," but in this technical age, that no longer applies, at least not in my case, and I feel that something's been lost there along the way.)


In any case, there aren't many days anymore when one of the first things I do is NOT to put something down SOMEWHERE...be it the fits and starts of a story, a bit of blogging, an email, or one of my nature columns. Whatever it is, I am always writing. And in the spurts between those attempts, some futile, some not so much, I am reading, which only adds to the confusion some days. Reading has an uncanny way of taking me in an entirely new direction from where I am presently at along some point in a composition, and that can be dangerous, especially if the story and the writing are engaging enough to take me that far away.


My reading tastes have always been pretty eclectic, and I have finally reached a point where many people were some 150 years or so ago when a book, ANY book, was a thrill to work through, if only for the simple joy in the act of reading itself. As time went on, literary tastes became more specialized and narrowed to the point where, nowadays, many people read, sadly, only one or two types of books. And I know a woman who, when asked what she reads, replies, "Oh, I read large-print books, because they're easier on my eyes." Duly noted.


But I digress. I rarely go to libraries anymore, which is, yes, quite sad, so I must do something about that. I usually don't have to, though, because I always have quite an assortment of "found" or "otherwise obtained" books kicking around that I slowly work my way through, and there is no rhyme or reason to it at all. Here's an example.


I just finished reading "Concubine," by Nora Lofts, concerning the partly fictionalized account of Anne Boleyn's treatment at the hand of Henry VIII. Now, I'm reading another oldie but goodie entitled "All the President's Men," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which is the historic account of the Watergate break-in. I was not closely attuned to that event while it was actually taking place, but as the old saying goes, "better late than never." And this aptly illustrates my point about how a book can take me far far away from the moment, as this one certainly has. I'm back in the 1970's, a time when I was first married and raising my first child, and it is a gross distraction from where my "writing mind" is at the moment.


But that's how a writer's (at least this writer's) mind works...it's in a thousand different places at any one time, and the trick is always to get back to square one, and the RIGHT square one, which is where I was at when I decided to take this latest little side trip.


Now where was that again?


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/

Reading to Write

There was a time when I read whatever I could get my hands on simply for the sake of reading...to absorb information, expand my body of knowledge, and travel to places that I couldn't otherwise afford to visit physically. At one point, I started keeping a written record of the books I'd read, and sometimes, I averaged between four to five a month, and some months less. This isn't nearly as fast a pace as some are able to maintain; and recently, as my eyesight ages along with the rest of me, it has slowed even more. And after staring at this computer screen almost all day and nearly every day, sometimes I can't even do any reading beyond what I've done here.




When I do read now, though, I find that I am reading as much to improve my writing skills as simply to absorb knowledge. I have also come to the realization that learning how to write through reading happens subliminally. As my mind scans and processes words, sentences and paragraphs, it is also storing them all away for future reference, not from an informational perspective but from a purely  structural viewpoint. I have, in other words (pun intended), learned without even knowing I was HOW to write, how to craft sentences and paragraphs, as well as how to assemble them as so many puzzle pieces into a coherent account, be it fictional or not. All of that stored information is now resurfacing to my consciousness where I can make ready use of it to move ahead with fiction writing. I no longer need to refer back to my mental writing guide files and "search" for how to construct a meaningful sentence or which word to choose to replace one that just doesn't move me.




From that I have deduced that all those years I spent reading were not for naught. For I am reaping their benefits now through my own work. So if I had any advice to give an aspiring writer, it would be to READ, READ, and READ. And when you're ready to put those first few words down, you may be surprised to find that it will be a lot easier than you thought.


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS