On the importance of reading

I've been asked to blog more about reading but have been blissfully ignoring this request, and I don't know for what reason. But I must blog about it because reading is such an integral part of writing, that without reading writing is more of a limping thing that can live but will eventually fall apart, if not mended by the imagination and style of others. Precisely why I'm writing this right now is due to the inspiration I got from rereading THE HOBBIT. The 2nd movie is coming out next week, as you all know, and I thought it would be a good idea for me to reread the book, because the last time I read it, it was in Russian. Of course, my goal after THE HOBBIT is to reread the whole LOTR (never read it in English, yeah, I know). But I'm getting ahead of myself. The blog post. About reading. So. You must read as much and as wide and as diverse as you possibly can. Here is why (it just struck me like lightning, so it will totally strike you too).

Throw all rules out the window. I'm tearing my hair out here right now, because presently I'm finishing 3rd draft of ROSEHEAD, and I happened to have stumbled on certain writing rules in my time, from reading books on writing (I don't read them anymore and suggest you don't either, unless you have a thick skin and can withstand the advice without changing who you are as a writer) and have picked up a few things that writers are not supposed to do. You know. Don't use passive verbs. No such things as "was" or "be" or "is" or any of that. No-no-no. And don't you dare using exclamation marks aplenty. Your editor will laugh at you, and your editor will edit them all out. It's bad prose to end your sentences with !!!! Bad, bad prose!!!!! Anyway. Okay. As a beginning writer I took it all to heart. So in my 3rd draft I ruthlessly cut all those things out. And now I'm reading THE HOBBIT. And you know what? There are "was" and "is" and "were" and !!!!! aplenty! And there are repetitions aplenty! Like using the word "aplenty" in one sentence and then immediatelly in the next! Oh, and there are adverbs! And adjectives! And plenty of descriptions! Yes, plenty (want me to say aplenty again?)! So I sat and grabbed my head and thought, well, shit. I wish I reread it earlier. Seriously. The story reads very well, with all those "was" and ! and whatnot. So, ignore the rules. I mean, just focus on telling the story. But you won't be able to do this, unless you read a lot and see others ignore the rules. I suppose you first have to know the rules, to ignore them. Anyway... What I mean by ignoring the rules is:

Say it as yourself. This is another thing you will pick up from reading a lot. Every writer has their own way of saying things. Yes, some writing rules are universal, but we all are different, and our writing reflects that. My favorite example to illustrate this would be Neil Gaiman. When you read his books, there is a certain slow quietness about them. The story pulls you in gradually and invisibly almost, to the point when you can't remember how you got it, but by then you don't want to get out. Now, go on YouTube and watch any of the videos of Neil talking. Here is one. See how his speech is slow and deliberate, how he takes his time to think? Same with writing. When you write, you write the way you speak, the way you would say it yourself. But you don't get this feeling and don't start applying it to your own writing (at least I know I didn't) until you have read a lot and have sensed a lot of it from others. Every time I pick up a book by a new author, I'm either immediately drawn into the book or not, not because I like or don't like the style or the story, none of that. It's because I feel or don't feel the voice of the author right away. If I feel it, I believe it, I'm curious, and I want to know more. If I don't feel it, well, I put the book aside.

Read to build confidence. Sure, writing more will make you feel more confident in your writing abilities. But reading builds confidence in your writing on a completely different level. When you read a book that's been published and successful, and you see similarities to your own way of saying things, it gives you courage. You think, hey, I do it like this author too! But you won't find many of these little coincidences unless you read a lot. Because, again, we're all different. You will hardly find many of them in one book, from one author, unless you're lucky, of course, and stumble on someone who is very similar to you. So you collect these epiphanies across many books, and you cherish them, and they give you hope, this hope in your own abilities as a writer. We're all storytellers, we all have told numerous stories since we started talking, but not many of us have the courage to try and put those stories down on paper. Why? Because we're afraid. We have no confidence, we don't think we can, we don't dare, and so we never do. And we regret it, because we wish we could. Well, I'm telling you, you can. Read. Read a lot. You're bound to come across the book that will inspire you, and speak to you, and make you want to tell your story, YOUR way. If you won't read, how will you know?

There, I think I got rid of most of my burst of inspiration. After reading THE HOBBIT, that is. Seriously. It's an amazing feeling, to be able to sense the world that Tolkien has created and to think about the worlds that I'm trying to create, and to know that it's okay. If he could do it, I can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. We all can do it. Reading is the way to writing Oh, and, pssst! There is one more thing. One more perk. Now, whenever anyone sees you with a book and raises a brow and asks, hey, aren't you supposed to be working, like, to be writing a book or something? You have the perfect excuse. You say, reading is part of my job as a writer. So I'm working right now, piss off. I just tried it on my boyfriend's kids, worked like a charm.

Choosing what to read and how it will affect your writing

I blog about writing a lot, but I haven't touched on the topic of reading in a long time, which is a pity, because reading is a huge part of writing. In fact, Stephen King said something along the lines of, if you don't have the time to read, then don't even bother writing. Or something like that. Anyway, this topic bubbled to the surface in the Twitterverse, as it usually happens, and I have realized that I actually have a particular reading strategy that I follow, doing it instinctively (or foolishly?). I read every day, a lot, in the hopes of becoming a better writer, and now I have the best excuse in the world to read as much fiction as I want. I tell people, hey, it's part of my job! 

Every day I write for 4+ hours and read for 2+ hours. So I'm being a bad girl, obviously, because originally I wanted to write/read 50/50, but somehow the second part of the day tends to slide right out from under my feet, with kids and dinner and laundry and whatnot, so I gave up on this dream of reading for 4 hours everyday, but I faithfully read at least 2 hours, sometimes more, if I can help it. I sort of view it as an extension of my writing, a plunging of my emptied brain (after 4 hours writing) right into the brain of someone else, preferably genius, and by contrast immediately see things that I can fix in my writing the next day, like dialogue, or a particular way of describing things, or new words (I have a little notebook where I write them down). If I can, I try to do longer than 2 hour spells of reading on the weekends, or, recently, I read for 7 hours straight on the plane, which was an absolute dream, if not for my Kindle that decided to die after 7 hours. 

I read only the books I like, by the authors I like. This is something for which I'll be beaten up, I'm sure, but it's okay. Go ahead. It was my decision after I honestly tried reading indie books, and people's manuscripts, and stuff people sent me. I did, I promise! Then I stopped. Because I realized that life is short and I only want to read something that I like or from what I can learn. The last book that I started and never finished was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and I felt really awful about it, because there was such a hype around it, that I thought, something is surely wrong with me, because all these people liked it and I didn't. But after a while it downed on me that if I don't like the book, I also don't learn from it. It doesn't inspire me. I know someone big and important said that you should read everything, but it doesn't seem to work for me. Here comes my confession. I don't read indie books, unless someone very very legit tells me that they are good (I'm not implying that my books are any good, I still have miles to learn to be satisfied with my writing). The last one I read was Wool by Hugh Howey, and I really liked it. I also stopped reading mainstream hyped up books that everyone is talking about, because it doesn't mean those books are mine. I'm a fan of a few big names like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Haruki Murakami, Neil Gaiman, as well as a fan of a few singular books by authors whom I haven't necessarily read through and through, like Lolita by Vadimir Nabokov, or Perfume by Patrick Suskind, or The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. That's all I read, until I discover a new author (more on how I discover new authors below).

I pair the tone and the genre of my reading to what I write. This is something I heard other people avoid, but I don't know why. On the contrary, I like to "swim" in the world I'm creating, both in my writing and in my reading. For example, when writing Siren Suicides, I read the entire The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, as it was dark fantasy that fit very much with the mood that I was trying to get across in my books. I felt like Stevie held me by the hand, telling me how to write this, how to write that, how to break up the dialogue, etc. It's not like I stole his methods or structure, it felt more like encouragement, like we were swimming in parallel worlds that intersected. I also discovered Haruki Murakami while I was writing Siren Suicides, and I devoured him, as his tone fit my tone perfectly. Now, when I started writing Rosehead, the first thing I did, I reread all of Harry Potter, to get into that YA zone, and am now reading the entire Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, to tickle my funny bone, because Rosehead is both dark and funny, very different from Siren Suicides. For my next novel, Irkadura, I have already a list of books lined up, like The Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, for example. Does my reading affect my writing? You bet! But it also acts as a guiding light. I see how other authors do it, and I see that I can do it too.

I rely on my friends' recommendation to discover new authors. All right, you can officially call me the reading snob, but after being burned several times, I started being very careful about picking up new authors. I typically trust my friends with their choices, or occasionally I would go out to a local bookstore and grill a clerk on a particular theme I'm looking for - this is how I discovered Murakami. I then sit in between bookshelves, on the floor, and read a few pages of three or four books by this new author, until I sense that, yes, I like it, I want to read it. With Murakami, as soon as I opened the book, I forgot about everything until 1 hour later I found myself still sitting on the floor, engrossed in the story. This is actually interesting, as it tells me how people will discover my writing, same way! Their friends will tell them (hopefully), that's why I'm prepared to not make much money for at least 3 years, because word-of-mouth takes time. Anyway, I got sidetracked here, sorry, back to the topic. So... new authors. Once I fall in love with an author, I usually read everything she or he has written, like right now I'm on a quest to devour everything by Terry Pratchett.

I write a review of every single book I read. I find it that summarizing my reading experience helps me to understand what kinds of books are mine, and what kinds aren't. So I review every single book I read on both Goodreads and Amazon. And I honestly would love to find more independent authors to read, but I'm so afraid after the many negative experiences I had, that I don't know when I will pick up my next indie book, because book reviews are the things that help indie writers to get noticed, and I would love to be able to help as many indie writers out there as I can. So, please, if you have read an awesome indie book recently that fits with my writing style (fantasy, dark, descriptive, choppy, direct), please let me know in comments? I will honestly try and read an excerpt and see if I can pick it up and read the whole thing.  

This is pretty much it. Oh, no, wait, one more important thing. I have made an interesting calculation, when I tried to gauge my reading list, to see how many books realistically I can read in my lifetime, and here are my numbers. I read with the speed of approximately 1 book a week, that makes it about 50 books a year, that makes it about 500 books in the next 10 years that I will read. How many years do I have left to live? I don't know, but in my lifetime I will probably not read more than 2,500 books. That's not very much, is it? Do you see why I'm picky now? Yeah. By the way, by all means, if you pick up one of my books and don't like them, don't read them. Drop them and find something to read that is truly yours. Life is too short to spend on books that don't make your heart beat faster.

Lure your beta readers WITH COOKIES!

Photo by Amanda Hoffman

All of last week, since I posted a call for Beta Readers on Twitter and Facebook and then posted that I got 50+ responses, a ton of people kept asking me: "How did you get so many beta readers?" and "Can you help me get beta readers too?" and "Isn't it too many people to deal with?" and "How do you sift through so many critiques?" Here is a blog post for you on this topic.  It's really easy.

All you have to do is, LURE THEM WITH COOKIES! Here is how:

Berner Honiglebkuchen. Berner what??? Nobody is interested in your story alone. First and foremost people are interested in why you wrote your story, and how come you spend your time writing and not doing nails or shopping for the latest bag or chatting hours away over a drink or fishing for a new car with your buddies or <insert another popular time waster here>. It's because when you start as a writer, you're a nobody. You are not Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or Haruki Murakami. You don't have 20 novels under your belt with fans catching your every breath. But, you are a human being with your own pains and worries and likes and joys and interests. And no matter how you turn it, we're all human beings and we love being connected. We're social animals, we can't be alone, we go crazy. So if you like Berner Honiglebkuchen, I'm so happy to find out that you know what it is, I shout: "Me too, me too! Do you like them slightly melted or chilled over night or..." And so the conversation continues. When you bake your Berner Honiglebkuchen, of course I want to try it! Moral: talk about WHY you write. People will want to read your stuff.

Macaron. Be polite and smooth, like a macaron. Really, don't shove your tray of cookies right under people's noses, yelling in their faces the recipe and how you made them and how they will taste. Nobody wants you to tell them how it will taste, they want to discover it on their own. Worse, what if they grew up in France and know about macarons more than you? You risk being publicly humiliated. Instead, tell everyone you're baking macarons for the first time, share your fears on how they might come out burned or too sweet or not crunchy enough, and people will try to help. I mean, you know how hard it is to make a macaron at home?!? You try it! It's in our nature, to help, we want to see each other succeed. We're not evil, really. We're awesome. If you only open up and will receive our help, we'll run at you with our own recipes, we'll wash your baking trays, we'll even offer to buy the ingredients for you and mix them up and set the timer. In other words, ask with humility. Share your fears, be humble, expect the answer to be NO and be ok with it, thank people for considering. And people will help.

Russian tea cake. Keep some kind of a system to remember people you asked and keep your word. As in, if you said you will send them your draft on a particular day, actually do it. If you said you need them to finish reading your draft on a particular day, actually go out of your way and personally remind them. You can't expect people to do things for you in a timely manner, if you yourself are a flake. It doesn't matter if they did it or not, still thank them for their time profusely, because they even considered chewing on your russian tea cakes. Alas, their grandma just send them a box of home-made snickerdoodles and they will pass on your offer. Because they don't know what a russian tea cake tastes like. Instead of getting pissed, ask them if they'd be interested in tasting the next batch, err, your next draft. If they would, put a reminder for yourself, and then let them be!!! I keep getting messages on Goodreads with people asking me over and over again to Beta Read. Guess what, I would've considered if they didn't overdo it. Let me be, I'm busy! But tell me more cookies are coming soon, and I might be interested. By the way, I use Batchbook to keep track of all my Beta Readers. Check it out, it's awesome.

Chocolate chip cookie. Everyone loves a chocolate chip cookie. But many people forget that it's an art to make one that tastes good. If you ask for feedback from Beta Readers, do take it. No matter what kind of feedback you get, don't throw it away because it's something you don't like or because it sounds like they have no idea how to make the perfect chocolate chip cookie. The rule of thumb I use, if 8 out of 10 people tell you the same thing, you probably need to change it. I also found that people whose writing I love tend to love my writing in return. And, the closer Beta Readers are to my audience, the better they receive it. Teenagers, in my case. When you get your beta reader feedback, sort it according to your audience. There will always be people who hate your writing, and that's not because it's bad, it's because there are people who need to hate something to feel better. Let them. There are people who hate classics. How is that possible? It is. So what. Keep writing. Again, thank them for spending time on reading your draft and move on. Write. That's your homework.

In summary, ASK. All you have to do is, ask people for help. They will. Be willing to take their help. It's all heartfelt, even if it sounds stern. Because a stale cookie is better than no cookie at all, right?

P.S.: Oh, and if you promised your Beta Readers a signed cookie, err, a signed copy of your book, don't forget about it and really do it when it's published. You'll win readers for life.

Why I read every day, a lot

If you're serious about writing, get serious about reading. I'm talking to myself here, by the way, and it's not me who said it, it was Stephen King in his book On Writing. So I did. I took it seriously. Because I'm serious about writing. Because some amazing things happened ever since I allowed myself to start reading again. By reading, I mean, reading fiction, novels, the types of books that give me goose bumps and keep me awake at night. And, you know what? It works. Here is how reading helps me be a better writer.

I AM good enough! (an epiphany some 30 years later). This happened a few days ago while I was reading Ender's Game. An epiphany struck me with a kick in the head, straight from the sky, while I was waiting for the pedestrian light to change, reading. My knees went weak and when the light went green, I couldn't take a step. It was all the books fault. I didn't know whether to cry or to hurl it into traffic for having wrecked my world so easily. Turns out, I was a gifted child, but was told otherwise by parents and teachers. So I grew up thinking I'm never good enough, never was, never will be. I suddenly understood why I never believed I could write, and why I was writing in the first place. Because I was bored. Conversations got boring pretty quickly, and I amused myself in school by inventing code languages, passing around notes, and then watching the boys get in trouble. Because of course they did it, not a sweet little girl at the front table, the one that always got 'A's. This epiphany allowed me to think, YES, I am good enough, and I will get even better. 

Patterns. I pick up patterns when I read. Patterns in dialogue, patterns in character development, patterns in raising the stakes, etc, etc. After reading many books, I noticed that all of them overlap like layers of tracing paper, and suddenly it's there. It's so clear,  I want to scream. Because it feels like I've discovered a new dinosaur species. And I did, I guess, considering the fact that story telling has been around as long as the spoken language. The more I read, the more patterns I see, and then I can apply them to my own writing.

20 different ways to say the same thing. Let's face it, all stories are the same. Once upon a time there was a... blah, and every day... blah, until one day... blah, and then... blah, and then... blah, and finally... BLAH! What blows me away is how different authors manage to say the same darn thing in so many different ways. I picture something like this in my head - videotape a flock of birds taking off, then show it to 20 writers and ask them to write a quick flash piece about it. That would be fascinating to do, wouldn't it? To collect those pieces later and to read them. Maybe this will inspire me to teach one day. For now, it helps my imagination.

Finding my style. Like any beginning writer, I struggle to find my own style. I tend to read something genius, fall in love with it, and then attempt to copy it, to see if I can do the same. My 1st draft was littered with those 'striving to be something else' passages. The more I read, the more I see how my own style could fit into this multitude. Not just that. The more I read, the more I see that I DO have a style, I'm just ashamed to admit it, afraid to use it - because I'm still a beginner, I'm still not sure. 

Because it's fun! In the end, reading great fiction is just fun. Wouldn't you agree? I've posted my absolute favorites to the right of my blog, a bit down, in a Goodreads widget. What are yours? Feel free to comment with recommendations.