My thoughts after reading a very long book · 2:17pm Jul 21st, 2015
I just finished reading the first book in a trilogy yesterday. Devices and Desires, Book 1 of the Engineer Trilogy by K. J. Parker. The first book was a little over 600 pages long. It's not uncommon for people to take pride in completing things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. Finishing a video game, a TV show season, a really long book. Why do we do that, I wonder? Why do we sometimes push ourselves to finish something frivolous, even if we're not really enjoying it? Admittedly, even though I would call the book I just read a masterpiece, I was pushing myself just a little during the beginning of the story. It had been so long since I had done such heavy reading, I felt like my imagination was struggling. I didn't like that feeling. I don't read books as much as I used to, admittedly. At some point, it started coming easy to me again, and for all intents and purposes I was in the story.
I walked away with two things after turning the last page. One was a feeling of immense satisfaction, and the other was a sense of inadequacy. I could never write anything as good as K. J. Parker. But that really is such a stupid way of looking at it. I shouldn't aspire to be on the same level as every writer I come across. I should aspire to be a better writer than I am now. A competitive outlook might work well for business and sports, but I'm not so sure it's appropriate for writing. My success in writing isn't dependent what other people write, though arguably it's another matter entirely for gaining publicity. But as exciting as attention may be, that's not really the goal either, now is it?
When it comes to the core of it, writing is really a one-player game, collaborative efforts excluded, of course. The game is simple. Take everything that's in your head, and spread it out for everyone else to see. But don't spell everything out, don't repeat yourself just to make sure a point gets through. Give people the chance to feel clever about putting two and two together. That was one of the things I really enjoyed about Parker's work, connecting the dots without being explicitly told what the dots were. I think that's really the heart of showing versus telling.