Tags
authortoolboxbloghop, bad books, good books, Inheritance Trilogy, N. K. Jemisin, Sharon Green, The Blending, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, tips, tricks, Twilight, writing
Another Wednesday, another #AuthorToolboxBlogHop! Even though I’m actually posting on Tuesday for once – take that, procrastination! Check out the main link for lots of other fantastic authors with lots of other fantastic advice.
I don’t have anything particularly mindblowing this month, just a truism that I apparently have a lot of trouble holding on to: it’s really hard to be a good writer if you’re not a good reader.
There’s a difference between being a reader and being a good reader, and it’s a distinction I often lose track of when it comes to my own life. It’s important for an aspiring author to have books nearby. Reading helps you keep up-to-date with the things that are happening in your genre so that you don’t accidentally invest hundreds of hours writing a book that’s already sitting on top of the NYT Best Sellers list. (I discovered three days ago that N. K. Jemisin has already written the book I was planning on starting after I finish my current project, so … back to the drawing board there.) It helps you understand what’s selling, what other people like, what’s been done poorly or done to death.
Not to mention, reading is fun! It challenges your sense of the norm, opens you up to new ideas, teaches you while it entertains.
And that’s great, for someone who just wants to understand the market and meet their Goodreads goal for the year.
For writers, though, other people’s books are pretty much the best resource we’re going to find. Each of the rules we’re trying to understand has been executed perfectly by hundreds and hundreds of authors – and broken by thousands upon thousands more. All we have to do is figure out which books can teach us what lessons and open ourselves up to the experience.
