Reading and Writing

Well, good Tuesday to you!

I don’t think that’s a thing… but it is now. Good Tuesday. Every Tuesday is a good Tuesday, wouldn’t you say?

And today, I want to answer yet another of your questions. If you’ll remember, this month is our catch-all month, of the topics too short to be focused on for a whole month, and basically all the little ideas I got in 2017 and couldn’t talk about because they wouldn’t make a cohesive series. Well, take that! It’s not cohesive at all, and I planned it that way!

…I digress…

If you follow me on Goodreads at all, you’ll know I have a fairly… eclectic reading list. I’ve been reading everything from Agatha Christie to the Witcher novels, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. But there’s something a couple fans have noticed, which I thought I should take a little bit of time to answer.

“Why don’t you read in the same genre you’re writing?”

First off, if you check my Goodreads out right now, you’ll think I must be joking. It says I’m reading Artemis by Andy Weir and Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian, and you all should know very well that I’m currently off the fantasy kick and writing in good ol sci-fi these days. But Artemis is sci-fi. So… that confuses things.

So I’ll just say that though Goodreads says I’m reading it, I haven’t actually made it past page one, primarily because every time I pick it up I get an idea for my book, and every time I pick up M&C I’m enthralled and can’t put it down.

But, I do not generally read books of the same genre in which I’m writing. It’s something of a rule of mine, and I stick to it almost exclusively. I very much dislike when I’m reading a book in the same genre of the book I’m currently writing.

Which is probably part of why it’s been hard to get past page one on Artemis as well…

Here’s why, though:

I don’t like to be distracted. I like to maintain a certain level of focus on the books I’m writing, and somewhere along the way I started to blur lines between reading and writing. That means that from time to time, what I was reading would find its way into what I was writing. And it happened not infrequently if the genres were the same. 

So right now, I’m writing a space epic and reading a nautical fiction from the 70s. The two have very little in common, and I like it that way. There’s no way for me to blur the lines and cross over from one to the other, so it’s safe—and actually, I tend to enjoy my reading more, if the genres are different.

If I’m reading the same genre I’m writing, sometimes it all feels like work.

Remember, if you want to keep a better eye on what I’m reading, or want to keep in touch with what I’m doing as a writer, be sure to join in on Divine Reads and follow me on Goodreads!

[love]

{Rani D.}