Well, I am coming into the final stretch of my current work in progress, An Education for Addie, which is why I’m not blogging or writing anything else lately. I’m on a tear, and I’m not going to abandon my tear until the well runs dry! Thanks to Michelle Richmond for offering the class, Novel in Nine – I’ve gotten so many good ideas from not only the lessons, but from the feedback and comments of the other participants. This is a prime example of a class that makes sense to take. I’m not only pleased at my progress, I’m full of passion to seeing this to completion. This is when writing in exciting! Not sure it’s anything of note; we’ll wait for my Editor for Life to give his yea or nay.
I took this photo last year while on a walk, before I’d even thought I’d be writing a novel set in 1898 Colorado Springs practically in this very spot.
I did decide to take some time to read, one of my favorite novels, In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke. It’s short, it’s haunting, it’s poetic. Imagine my dismay when I went to retrieve it from my terribly pared-down library (due to retirement and moving across the country) that my copy wasn’t there! I was so excited about this book for many reasons, that I’d lent it out to several people, most of whom returned it – obviously not the last person, who I can’t remember because it was probably years ago.
Thank goodness for Amazon. (Yes I know, AMAZON, but the local bookstores didn’t have it. The author is from Michigan which is the only place I’ve seen this novel on the shelves.) I received my replacement copy the next day. (And from now on, I won’t be lending my books out, not unless I know you and know where you live.)
Reading, especially good books, it not just entertainment for me, it’s education. I take the book apart; I see what works and what doesn’t, what hits it out of the park and what’s a little weak. Yes, even my favs aren’t perfect – and neither am I. Sometimes I look at sentence structure in what I’m reading and try to break it down.
My current work in progress is not in the same vein as In a Perfect World. There’s little poetry in my words, as it’s historical fiction – it’s what I call a basic story with a basic plot and running linearly. There’s good, there’s bad, there are challenges, challenges met and conquered, The End. I might change that in a future draft, though.
However, my last NaNoWriMo takes place in the same place(s) but 85 years later, and that story has some twists and turns and is dark. In a Perfect World is dark. It ends, but leaves you wondering just how it ends and what the characters’ future will be like, beyond the last page. This is why the novel struck me so, and after my recent reading, strikes me still.
‘They’ say you should read if you’re a writer, and I agree. Since what I’m working on is considered ‘sweet’ – no real sex – I read sweet romances. Since it’s historical, I not only read recently written novels set in a similar time frame, I also read novels written during that time frame, as well as letters written by people who lived then. (My novel isn’t full of the stilted vernacular of the time, but I wanted to include a flavor of it.) None of these genres is my preferred reading material, but sometimes you must step outside your comfort area and read something new and different.
My takeaway is that reading other work is just as important as the effort you put into your own.
