Reading More Books Boosts My Writing Speed

I know many writers say to read as much as you write. Like most writers, I do read quite a bit more than the average Joe, but since I moved back to Texas (or really, since I moved in with my husband), I’ve had very little space for books. Most are packed away in boxes, and it’s stressful to rummage through them to find a good read, so I haven’t read much in the last two or three years.

When I got my Kindle, I bought three books within the first two days. Later, I checked, and all of them were around 300 pages, which isn’t too bad but not exactly long, either. Throughout the month, I bought four more, also quickly devoured. It felt good to gobble up an entire plot, to become immersed in a finished product of someone’s imagination.

Then, yesterday, I wrote four thousand words within four hours. Later that night, I realized not only was I still able to write and write well, I also knew where I was going with my plot. It didn’t take me a long time to sit and ponder, if that makes sense, as if the reading helped my natural sense of how a story should flow. At least, I think it helped — and then some. New Fate’s first draft is nearly completed now.

I know some writers who say reading doesn’t help and others who say it really does. What do you think?

Some Thoughts on a Novel’s Beginning

I have a black casing for mine and it goes with me everywhere, seeing as it easily fits in my purse. Brilliant design.

Recently my husband bought me a Kindle as an early birthday present. Beforehand, I figured it wouldn’t change how I read much. Man, was I wrong. I’ve read three books in the past week, which is more than I’ve read in the past three months alone. It’s made me really happy to get back to being a voracious reader, and I’m excited to read indie novels as well as traditionally published ones. However, I’ve noticed an interesting difference between the two types of ebooks. I’ve bought two traditionally published novels so far and no indies yet, though I’m reading four samples of indie ebooks at the moment. None of the indie samples I’ve read so far strike my fancy.

Why? Because they have killer-boring beginnings.

Yes, killer-boring. As in, the beginning is a prologue, or a play-by-play of how the soon-to-be hero’s parents tragically died. Or how the main character came to be in such a loathed place. There were a few variations of this, but you get my point. I don’t necessarily want to be thrown into the middle of the action, but I don’t want to be thrown so far away from the actual plot that, every chapter on, I’m re-reading little bits about the prologue or the first chapter.

Here’s a brilliant idea: Cut out that information. Just start with the hero working with his dad at the forge and mention the dude’s not the main character’s real father. Or, better yet, have that come out in the action or hinted at in dialogue. The town bully can sneer at the main character for being no one special — and what’s worse, the bully says the main character’s probably a bastard, seeing as he doesn’t know his parents. Cue conflict, cue interest. Where’s the parents? And then, five pages later, a dragon lands and bows to the main character as the Dragon Prince. Bam. Now you really want to know what the hell happened to his parents.

I’m not an expert on writing. Really, I’m twenty. I’m not that great at it, but I study it like crazy because I want to be the best I possibly can be. When, as a reader, certain books are annoying the crap out of me, the writer in me wants to find out why so that I can avoid repeating those mistakes.

Now, the two traditionally published books I bought didn’t start out with a rambling prologue that explained what happened to the parents (they were the mythic Dragonlords, wyverns being their hated enemies, and the good parents fell in a bitter, epic battle. A dragon saved their son, let him grow up all normal-like, then called him when the time came. Voila! Plot’s fully explained and is now boring). In The Forever War, you’re thrown into the main character’s training. But not at the beginning of the training, back on Earth. Nope, you’re started off on a foreign planet in 1997. Seeing as the book was written in 1975, that was still far in the future, but for me, that was like, woah, wait, what happened in 1997? What the hell? What kind of planet are you on? I’m hooked, I have to know.

Now I’m not using this an example of traditional is better than indie. Please don’t go there. What this is an example of is good editing and good understanding of how to hook a reader. Also, this might not hook all readers. In fact, maybe I’m a strange example and prefer a strange type of book. Maybe I’m too picky. All I know is that’s what I personally prefer, and what I personally think writers are missing out on. Don’t give all the plot secrets away in the prologue. Honestly, don’t even have a prologue unless it’s gripping and leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

Self Publishers and Marketing: AKA Stop Pissing Off the Readers

Okay, so everyone can agree that the self-publishing breakthroughs like ebooks and digital publishing have allowed writers more freedom. This is great news for us; now, more than ever, we can reach out to readers and offer them a quality story.

At this point, unfortunately, I bet a good amount of readers consider self published work to be very poor quality.

Before you get upset, stay with me for a moment. First, more and more now, when I personally peruse Amazon, I avoid the 99 cent ebooks all together for novels or novellas (short stories are different; I feel individual short stories at 99 cents are decently priced) because of the quality. Nothing could get me to wade through that junk, even if your book was the next masterpiece. Why? Because it’s a serious pain and a serious waste of time to go through all of that crap.

As if that wasn’t a big enough turn-off to a reader, go check any Amazon forum devoted to fantasy, science fiction, or YA. Go check Kindleboards (where the signatures are so overwhelming), go check any forum that allows self published authors to self promote. It’s embarrassing. As a reader, why would I want to deal with all the marketing tactics? It’s overwhelming, even if it’s basic stuff like a book cover art that links to Amazon in a person’s signature — because usually there’s like three or four of them per post!

Anyway, this is just something I noticed as a reader trying to find decent self published or indie work. Some people say they find great reads, and while I’m sure most of those are from reader reviews or recommendations, I bet some of those were from seeing an interesting cover on a forum. I won’t deny that a few of the images looked interesting, but because of the sheer amount, the odds are I’ll never care. For the record, I want to self publish, so I’m not saying this to be a snob. I’m saying this as a reader. There have to be other ways to get novels to stand out. Especially if you, I don’t know, write a good one — or even a decent one, I’ll totally take that (if it’s not 99 cents). Of course, that’s a different topic for a different post.

What are your thoughts? As a reader, is the high level of self publisher promotion too much? Do the tactics compel you to buy their work or run away at high speeds? Talk to me.

Making Changes: Goodbye Interweb Clutter, Hello Writing Time

So I realized yesterday that I spend too much of my time on pointless internet activity. It takes hours to check Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, my emails, read blog posts, and so on. By the time I get around to writing, I need to do some housework or run some errands or spend some time with my husband. No writing gets done, and I end the day frustrated. I stay up late with no energy to write but with the frustration of not writing, which makes me feel like I’ve burned my time away on stupid stuff.

This is my own fault and I’m going to fix it. I’m wasting valuable time on things that aren’t important. It’s time to redecorate my internet life as well as where and how I spend time writing. How am I going to do this? Well.

I’m going to centralize my online activity to free up writing time

Right now I have two blogs, this one and another specifically for my writing. I think it’d be best to slowly move those short stories and novel snippets over here. It’s hard to maintain two blogs plus the other social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter as well as Facebook and all the other internet places out there that sap away all my writing time by encouraging my procrastination. Basically to limit the excess I’m going to…

• Make better use of multi-post options. On Tumblr you can post things there and on Twitter at the same time. With WordPress you can post things to Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Doing this will free up the time it takes to post the same message three or four times.
• Connecting my email accounts to one client. Gmail has the option to syndicate other email accounts to that particular Gmail inbox, meaning I can get the feed for my other email account as well as my Gmail account at the same time. No checking multiple places for emails. That was such a huge hassle.
• Ditching forums and writing sites. With the exception of deviantART. I still have a connection there. However, there were other writing sites I was spending way too much time on with little to no return for the effort. No, thanks. I’ll keep that time for writing.

I’m going to stop reading so many blogs

Dane, I’m finally taking your advice. I spend hours reading blogs about writing, the publishing industry, self-publishing, and other posts about writers in general. Then I also comment on some as well as tweet a few of the ones I found useful. Only they aren’t useful. I’ve read the advice about a million times in a million different ways. This needs to change. In order to do that, I’m going to…

• Delete 80% of the blogs I email subscribed to. Why? Because I follow most of these people on Twitter. Their Twitter profile usually has a link to their website or blog, and from there I can always browse their posts when I have the time to devote to reading and commenting properly. This keeps my email from getting backlogged, which keeps me from spending more time on my emails, which — well I’ll be damned — frees up more time to write. I see a cycle here.
• Pick a time to read blogs. Probably over the weekend. I don’t write over the weekends because I plan on writing a lot during the week and everyone needs a break at some point or another. Giving two hours somewhere in there to read and comment on blogs wouldn’t hurt and might actually be relaxing, as I do like to read that stuff.
• Stop viewing blogs as a marketing tool. At this point a blog is nothing but my little corner of the world. Like Dane said on my last post, I’ve got nothing to give a reader on my blog right now. I’m not an author yet, I have nothing to sell, so this is just me shouting at the internet hoping to get subscribers for… what, exactly? At this point, it’s a waste of time. At some point, fans of my writing will come to this blog, maybe read more about my work, find some more they like, and buy. They could link the blog to other friends, which is basically word of mouth interweb style. But that’s not now. I’m not ready for that yet. I need to spend less time on my blog and more time — gasp – writing. It’s amazing how this all ties together. Seriously.

This will also affect my reading time

I’ll be able to read more books and explore the work of more fantasy authors because I’ll be more efficient and productive, which will leave me extra free time for the things I enjoy. That’s something I can’t lose sight of. Writing isn’t my entire life, and I need to nurture the reader in me, the wife in me, the young adult, the guitarist, and the explorer. I want to get out more, to take my husband somewhere and just drive, get to know the city a little better. But I can’t do that now because of my own habits.

This will change. I will change it.

What do y’all think? How do you spend your internet or writing time?

PS: Still fiddling with post styles. Was this easier to read than some of my other posts? Or was it just annoying?