Since I'll soon take off on this big terrifying holy fuck writing adventure, I've been hanging out with writers a bunch, trying to feel less crazy.
Because: writing a novel? Insane in the membrane. Thank god for a robust publishing industry that will undoubtedly reward my efforts.
"What can't you read when you're writing?" one writer asked recently. For him, the answer was specific writers whose style mimicked his own.
"Any contemporary fiction," said another who writes gothic fairy tales.
For me, it's too much of anything. I worked in publishing right after I got out of college, and wrote nothing during that period. Like a baker who comes to loathe the smell of yeast, I couldn't read proposals and write cover copy all day and then return to the computer at night to bang out prose.
Now that I'm in a job where I don't work with fiction, it's probably genre specific. If I were writing suburban horror, I'd probably eschew books of that type. A bientot, Shirley Jackson.
Do you write, paint, or make something? What can't you have in your life when you're focused on producing something?
pretty book picture by striatic on flickr creative commons
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