A + M

Hey guys! I hope you’ve all had wonderful weekends and survived your way through Monday. Me, I enjoy Mondays. I usually don’t have as much on my workload, so I can take some extra time out for writing. Woo! I honestly don’t know how I got my week set up that way, but it’s pretty darn great.

Anyhoo, all month long, we’ve been talking about the things that have inspired me in my writing career. Things like television shows, books, and the occasional movie have frequently brought inspiration to my little writer mind, and I’ve loved sharing some of those inspiring things with you.

Today’s inspiring book series, for the first time in this series, is one that I won’t always recommend you to read. In fact, I’d only have you read it if you have trouble describing things which will be important through the whole of your book, or if you really like historical fiction.

Aubrey Maturin

Patrick O’Brian

Never heard of it? That’s fine, I wouldn’t expect you to. But if you’ve ever seen the movie Master & Commander, starring Russel Crowe, then you’ve seen a visual representation of a part of this series.

O’Brian wrote a series of historical fiction books, primarily taking place on the sea, and dealing with the characters of Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, Doctor Stephen Maturin. And it’s one of the hardest book series’ I’ve ever started reading. I’m only two books in, and though I intend to read the next one, I’m also dreading it.

Why?

Because though O’Brian is great with descriptions, he needs a little more story.

But this post is supposed to be about something inspiring! So, let’s focus on the former.

See, O’Brian is amazing about descriptions, about teaching you something through his descriptions, and then never going back to those descriptions again, because he assumes you read it the first time and understood everything he was saying—and he’s actually right.

I’ll put it like this:

I did a ton of research on sailing ships when I was writing Dwr. I had to. Practically the whole story takes place on a ship, so if I didn’t as least know the basics, it wasn’t going to work.

But if I had simply read Master & Commander, I could’ve skipped doing all that research, because I would’ve known it.

That’s where O’Brian excels, and I find that highly inspiring. I would love to write something that teaches my readers, something that sticks with them long after they’ve finished reading my book. And that right there is why I’ll keep reading his books, even though they can be a little hard to read in other regards.

As we all know, I dearly love to learn.

[love]

{Rani D.}