One of the reasons why I started
this blog is to help me manage my time enough to actually work on my
story. Is that actually happening? Well I think the blog is speaking for me
right now. haha
That being said though, my goal is
to try and at least make one post a week here from here on out. It may not have to do with my own works, it
may just be a review of a really awesome book I just finished reading, but the
idea is to keep myself writing. While I
hope that someone out there is reading my musings, and maybe getting something
from them, I understand that this is just one of many, many, many blogs out
there. But if you are reading this, I
challenge you to try and do something similar.
It might not have to do with your own epic adventure tale, but at least do
some real writing every week, if not every day.
It will help keep the creative juices flowing, and let what you are
trying to write express itself.
Anyways, to the topic of this post:
Do you write what you read?
This topic seems to run the gambit
of reactions from authors. Some authors
refuse to read anything in the genre that they are writing in, unless they are cooperating
with you on the work. And I know exactly
why they feel this way. We have
developed a society that is very protective of personnel achievements. You create this grand idea, okay, it is
yours, and no one else can touch it. So
as an author, if you come up with a similar idea to someone else and you’ve
been reading that persons work, how do you know if you came up with it before
you read their stuff, or afterwards? Or
maybe you did come up with it first, how do you know that your idea of how the
plot should go wasn’t influenced by the other persons writing? You really can never tell, and you would be
really hard press to prove that it was your idea if you were taken to court.
But on the flip side of the coin is
the idea of how are you to write in a genre that isn’t your favorite. Say you love reading horror novels, why would
you suddenly decide to go write a romance novel? You wouldn’t.
So what are you to do? Give up reading or writing altogether?
Well seeing as the whole point of
this blog is to help me, and maybe other people out there, in jump starting my
own writing, definitely not give up writing.
Nor can I advocate giving up reading either, especially not when I wish
there was more time in the day so I can finally start whittling down at the
gigantic list of books that I still need to read.
This is definitely a topic that I’m
going to have to revisit, because I don’t know what the right answer is. Maybe the answer is along the lines of what
you do with a research paper, if you can find 3 separate sources that say the
same thing, you don’t have to cite it.
But then your idea has been used at least 3 different times. Maybe you want to write at the edge of your
comfort zone? Or maybe we should just
accept that there are only a limited number of different themes out there, that
we are going to step on someone else’s toes no matter what, so just try not to
make it too obvious?
Definitely something to
revisit. If you have any comments, leave
them below.
Until next week, keep on writing!
