The Importance of Reading (and Writer's Block)

Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner was a smart man, and he was also right. I consider myself a writer, but only sometimes. What I really am is a reader. I don't read much horse words these days, but the amount of professional fiction I blaze through on a weekly basis has been ridiculous. Not to say I set a quota for myself or anything; I just love the act of reading, especially the act of reading a physical book. I go through about 150 pages a day, which isn't impressive, but that's more than enough to get through a novella in one sitting. I remember one fateful day I ended up reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which slapped) and Ready Player One (which sucked) from start to finish. That's about 700 pages. Not sure how I did that. But my point is that I read a lot, including a good deal of Mr. Faulkner's works. (As an aside, for those who doubt Faulkner's storytelling prowess, check out "A Rose for Emily"—it is a splendidly structured short story.) I read a short story by Ted Chiang and a couple chapters from a Jane Austen novel within an hour of each other. I have J. G. Ballard's Crash and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God on a shelf side by side.

I read a great deal.

And sometimes I even write!

But more often than not, even after weeks of my "apprenticeship," I sit down and try to start a story—not long, let's say 3,000 words planned—and get caught like a deer in headlights. I don't know what to do; strange, because my technical understanding of the craft has certainly gone beyond that of a novice's. My most recent horse entry for the Writeoff Association shows no small amount of promise, or so I think. Yet that was a month ago, and I haven't so much as two words to rub together since then. I also haven't published a story on FiMFic in like four months. I feel, or rather fear, that soon my horse writing license will be revoked. My reading license has been thoroughly held up to standards, of course. I've been devouring Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, D. H. Lawrence, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad with gusto, with some good old science fiction (my country of literary birth) on the side.

And yet I can't write.

I'm sorry, Mr. Faulkner, but I seem to be trapped in a mental corner here.

I must have close to a dozen fics with outlines in my Stories folder, yet I can't bring myself to start any of them. There's even one where, if I were to have it submitted by month's end, I shall have earned $15! Yet not even the promise of money has compelled me to do my work. It's troubling—like I need some kind of kick in the pants to get myself out of this funk.

...would anyone like to collaborate on some horse words?

Comments

[cleverpun]

Writing is a hard thing for me too. And, paradoxically, reading and editing occupy the same sort of niche as writing in my head. I often spend time doing one or the other, and then "take off" for the day when I'm done. I've been doing so much reading and editing and procrastinating lately, that I haven't touched the latest book I checked out from the library.

I would highly recommend that you join some sort of group or club for writing. Yes, yes, extrinsic motivation is less healthy than intrinsic motivation. But it's better than no motivation at all.

While Meetup.com has obviously been reduced by the pandemic, there are still plenty of groups meeting online. I'm lucky to have a critique club that is still meeting via Skype.

And if you don't want to take the step of having other people read your fiction, I would recommend Shut Up and Write. Everyone gets together and writes, and the only rule is no talking to other people. (Though we have relaxed that on a few occasions, haha.) Usually in person, currently over Zoom.

And if that is still too big a commitment, then find just one other person and do some editing trades with them.

And sure, a collab might solve these problems too. But if your goal is to advance your own writing, then a collab may not be the best choice to overcome writer's block.

I've always been a perfectionist. And not in the "I want to make this better" way. In the "I look at this, and all I see is the mistakes" way. Submitting my writing to others on a regular schedule—mistakes be damned—has helped me a lot.