Why read? · 2:25am Feb 24th, 2014
I've been leaning more and more towards actually "turning pro", by which I mean taking a year or two off and writing stuff that I intend to sell. Part of my preparation is reading novels.
I haven't read novels in years. I've been coasting on the reading I did before college (classics, plus large quantities of science fiction). Now I've been going to the library, carefully choosing books meant to be good influences, and trying to get through one per week.
So my reading isn't "leisure time". I have to set myself a deadline and force myself to do it instead of writing pony or reading fail blog. It isn't exactly "fun", or at least not as fun as other things I could do.
Yet I seem to enjoy it just as much as before. I don't know if "enjoy" is the right word. The reading itself isn't as enjoyable as watching YouTube videos, or solving a tricky coding problem, or rock climbing. Most of my enjoyment seems to come after the fact, not as "fun", but as the pleasure of making connections, and of understanding something that someone wanted very badly to tell me, and talking to people about it.
And the books that were most fun to read, like Robert Jordan and Tom Clancy novels, were books I "didn't like", books I regretted reading, mostly because I couldn't remember anything that happened in them a week after finishing them.
How about you? Is reading "fun"? Why do you do it?
Reading a really good book -- and by that I mean a well-written book with interesting theme, setting, characters and plot, not a book judged to be "really good" by litcritters -- is one of the greatest pleasures I can have by myself. Certainly one of the longest-lasting.
It's also extremely necessary in order to learn how to write well. One can look at what better writers have done and learn their techniques. Without a good grounding in what has been written in a field, one is likely to write derivative tripe and imagine that one has done something deeply imaginative -- look at Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, which basically duplicated 1950's-1960's science fiction, badly. The fact that one can sometimes find idiots who will agree with oneself on this doesn't change the nature of the idiocy involved, and one can't count on finding Big Names to suck up to oneself as they did to Atwood.
1868233 I agree completely, but will add that it is equally important to read amateur fiction. Then compare and contrast with the published fiction to avoid the pitfalls common to the novice writer.
I read for the entertainment. Some time to just for the distraction, other times to expand my horizons. Ultimately reading anything is better than nothing.
I highly suggest Terry Pratchett's Discworld Series. At it's basics his books are a satire on fantasy novels but they are so much more than that. He is a master of deconstructing and reconstructing traditional tropes by turning them on their heads. He is an author who managed to produce two books a year in his prime. Sadly because Alzheimer's and having to dictate his books there has been some decline in his quality.
Why read? To feed my imagination, of course.
The more I read, the more I get to experience the ideas and ideas of others. I can then take the concepts I read and add them to my imagination, which usually then creates a third entirely different thing. Basically, I guess it expands my playground (I'm one of the people who always has their head in the clouds). That's probably why I can't stand non-fiction--or realistic fiction, for that matter; it's just so un-interesting because you can imagine half of what's going to happen. But I digress...
If I'm reading, I want it to be about something new or exotic, or even just a new twist on something I already know. And beyond that, at least non-fiction reading lets me experience something interesting that I couldn't find out in the normal world.
(Yeah, I know, I'm completely unhelpful for what you're going for...
)
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Yes, that's true. Also, amateur writers will sometimes write something beyond the state of the art for professional writers, which might conflict with the prejudices of the literary and publishing-house establishment Gatekeepers. So you might find something in amateur fiction superior (or at least different) than the professionally-published stuff.
Because I enjoy it, because it's an excellent source of idea fodder, and because written text seems to attract my eyes to an almost magnetic degree.
Reading is horrible. I'm chained to a chair and forced to endure hour after hour after hour of pony fiction, most of it terrible. I want the world to burn.I genuinely like reading a lot, but don't have enough time to do it—at least in the context of professionally published fiction. What I've wound up doing a whole lot more of lately, instead of reading, is listening to Writing Excuses, which hits closer to home for what I'm interested in writing anyway. Given that I've started moving from being a fan of reading to a hobby writer who's actually interested in trying to do this well, my attention has shifted a lot more toward the craft side of things. I still enjoy reading, but reading is only giving me half of my fix, now, so I have to mix it up with doing other things as well.
But I do still find it fun. Then again, I like reading things like Robert Jordan.
1868392 Eeyup, also http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/correia-on-the-classics/
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/correia-on-the-classics/
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/ask-correia-8-the-evils-of-mary-sue/
Some of the best writing advice you will find from someone the literati hates.
Hmm... to be honest. At times its fun and at others no. But all I can say on this is that I only read a book past two chapters if it caught my interest.
I read to explore some author else's world and if it doesn't catch my attention it becomes a job for me to read the rest of your book. I like author's that let me inside their worlds and keeps me thrilled with whatever the worlds offer.
I can't tell exactly why, actually. But reading has been my main source entertainment since I was, I believe, 8 years old. Given that I'm now 35, and that I tend to read at least one pocket novel-sized book per week just for fun (apart from books I read for work), I've read a ridiculously large amount of books in my life.
I love stories in a wide array of genres - about anything except horror and terror, though my favorites are adventures in space opera and high fantasy scenarios - and books give me the chance to imagine more elements of the story than a comic book or a movie, down to creating the appearance for the characters and how they sound; this tends to immerse me better in the story than when such elements elements are already defined in a comic or movie. Reading also means I get to set my own pace; movies tend to alternatively bore me (when they are going too slowly) or frustrate me (when they go too fast, making me miss details).
It's not just stories, though; I love learning new things in a wide number of fields. I used to read encyclopedias for fun as a child, and nowadays I tend to scour sites like Wikipedia and TVTropes for the same reason. This doesn't happen with all fields of knowledge; some things I find very boring, such as most things that relate with celebrities (to the point I usually can't name a single actor in most movies I've just seen, name musicians that are currently famous, etc).
This love of learning also extends to "reverse engineering" games, books, movies, etc; if I actually liked any such work, I will usually analyze it's elements, trying to determine how, and why, each was used, just for the fun in learning it. Due to that, nowadays with the proliferation of Wikis I will often go through a fair number of wiki articles on any game or work of fiction that catches my attention; regarding MLP, for example, I've read the pages for every episode, character, creature, location, and plenty others from the Friendship is Magic Wiki.
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Oh, Correia is great in terms of his understanding of both the technique and the business of writing. Sarah Hoyt is another good source of such information. Plus, they really piss off the litcritters, so you know they're doing something right!
I dislike using the term fun to describe how I feel about literature; it's too limiting.
I read for many different reasons: the beauty of language, characters who I can relate to and aspire to be more like or even characters who I feel a romantic attraction to, but I primarily read with the goal of not being bored. If a story is interesting, I keep reading; if it's not, I put the book down, usually after a couple pages.
I find it strange though. The inside of my head is interesting enough. I can entertain myself without anything to really do for hours, possibly days but I don't know for sure. I read to find stories that are more enthralling than the usual thoughts that fill my head. And I guess I also read to gain artistic influences, though I've realized that it isn't the only way, that everything you do is an influence.
There's also the fact that I want to be "well read" as a person. I want to be the kind of person who keeps badgering friends to get around to reading Perdido Street Station or Confederacy of Dunces. I want to know about all the noteworthy authors so I can tell other people about them and keep them from being forgotten.
Overall I'd say that it's best to just read the books that you find interesting. Really, if you're bored by what you're reading, you're really not going to get anything out of it besides the feeling that many Americans have about books: that they're just a waste of time.
I read for enjoyment. Except its not that simple. When you read something that makes you bawl your eyes out, like "The keepers of discord", or something deeply uncomfortable, like I can't think of an example, why do you do that? When I saw my high school's production of "the laramie project", I bawled like a baby for half an hour afterwards at my girlfriend's house. That wasn't pleasant, but I'm glad I experienced. I guess I just answered my question. I read to experience. Usually happy things or adventure, but occasionally ships or tragedies. Reading is ultimately about imersive vicarious experiences.
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was enjoyable to read. (Actually, all the Steinbeck I've read was.) I wouldn't say it was fun to read, I wouldn't go quite that far, but it was enjoyable. The after-the-reading was enjoyable too. (This hasn't been as true of all of his writing.)
It was also really frustrating to read. I couldn't just go through it. It had this really dense, saturated style to it and I had to take breaks on a regular basis because it was so good (every chapter, I think).
I think some of the best stuff is fun to read and good after the fact. This is a rare quality. I've seen it in some of Ghost's stuff, but not all of it. I think Yours Truly has it. Terry Pratchett has hit this with Discworld, I don't think always but fairly often.
I was originally going to try to make a point, but then I thought I wasn't able to support it, but now I can't remember what either part of that argument was. It may have mutated again and picked up the modifier "rare quality".
I read partly for enjoyment, and partly for... now how did I put this... and partly "because I enjoy learning things, and reading is practically (ie nearly) designed to be an efficient method of learning". (Which reminds me, you have a blog post about methods of learning I need to look up and re-read.) I'm not sure which I think is a bigger factor. There's also the social factor, talking about things I've read with other people.
Thought experiment: compare the enjoyment of solving a coding problem with the "after-the-fact" enjoyments of reading. (I'm not going to tell you at this time what connection I thought of, because that would affect your conclusion.)
I strongly recommend Steinbeck, I'd say start with Of Mice and Men and if you like the writing read more. Don't binge-read it though. You'll OD.
Generally speaking I'd say most of my reading is done to pass the time quietly. It's similar to the reality tv tripe I'll watch when it's raining outside, everyone else is busy and there's nothing good on. I'm not particularly invested but it's better than nothing.
The truth is though that I read because I am always searching for one of those books. The kind of book that has you thinking about it at work, pondering the characters and plot and wishing you could be reading it right now. The kind of book that has you fearfully glancing at your alarm clock as it ticks closer and closer to the point where you'll really really need to go to sleep or risk spending the next day as a zombie. The kind of book that has you thinking about your own mortality, because it would totally suck if you died before you'd finished reading it. The kind of book that is still entertaining and engaging you weeks after you finished reading, as your imagination continues to spin from the momentum it gained the moment the story hooked you.
So, uh, yeah. That's why I read.
Reading was literally what I did because I didn't have anything else to do. I know this because now that I have things to do, I don't read the way I used to. I was a 500 page a day reader, now I get through that much actual printed material maybe once a month.
I did enjoy it. It still do sometimes, but I have always read pretty much to pass the time.
I do think, though, that most of that reading wasn't wasted. I picked up all kinds of interesting facts, and I know an awful lot about story construction and story tropes, I always tended to pay attention to how stories were put together. It's helped my writing quite a lot, I think.
I love books. I've been reading since . . . well, forever. I'm pretty sure I was the fastest learner when it came to reading in elementary school, since I knew that books were full of ideas, and the only way to know what was in them was to learn what the words meant. The first series I can remember reading was LotR, and I think I was seven when I read it (I'd imagine a lot of it went over my head).
I guess that's what got me into writing, really--the thought that an author can make up a world all of his own, and other people will play in his sandbox (so to speak).
I'm an escapist reader. I prefer a story that I can wrap around myself in a little bubble of unreality where the phone won't ring, the kids won't scream about something I's supposed to do now that they didn't tell me about last week, and it has to end well. Yeah, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. There's a lot of us out there of various types. I would put the Harlequin romance crowd as about 90% escapists, as well as a lot of the Correia/Drake/Bujold/McCafery crowd. We want to see our protagonists face difficult (but not too difficult) tasks, triumph over them, and proceed onward into the future. I guess it's this urge we have to create a perfect world in our heads. My favorite quote for programmers is "All I want is fifteen minutes with the world's source code and a quick recompile."
I'll keep it short. I like reading.
I don't get as much "fun" reading as I do playing video games, judging from how I spend my time when I have a lot of it, but I do think I find more value in reading. I read stuff like Austraeoh for pure pleasure. I guess it's kind of like a video game in that sense, which may be why I enjoy it so much. I read stuff like Friendship is Optimal because its ideas interest me greatly. I read stuff like your blogs on writing because I feel like I benefit from them, despite the unlikelihood of me ever actually writing a story. Maybe it helps me figure out why I like a story, or what makes it quality, but the stories that I find to fit under that criteria aren't necessarily the ones I read for "fun." When I'm not reading stories for fun (stories that make me emotional, but don't have much greater purpose than that), I'm reading because reading either makes me think (the more idea-driven stories), which is also fun, or because it looks like it'll be something that benefits me in the future (these would be more like blog posts and articles).
Judging from my favorites, most of the stories I like and read fall under the first category.
I, like several others have already stated, read for multiple reasons, often simultaneously. I do read for fun. Reading, the basic act of it, is pleasurable to me. If I read something, it sticks with me. I learn faster and retain that information longer than if I'm told or shown how to do something.
I also intend to write publishable material. I don't know if it will end up being something creative(hard sci-fi ghost stories, baby!), or something technical, like a manual. I have experience with both. Hell, the reason I got into fanfiction was to give myself more experience writing creatively and storytelling expertise.
When I read now, be it fanfiction, a printed novel or technical book, I like to pick it apart to its bones and figure out what makes it work ,or alternately, why it doesn't. If you ever get the chance, look up technical writing and information communication. It will show you "background" skills that make story telling richer and more nuanced.
Reading is fun to me. I like absorbing things. It is just an inherently enjoyable activity to me.
It also doesn't take me terribly long to read an entire book; IIRC it took me about 8 hours per book the last time I read the Wheel of Time, just sitting down and reading them, though that was some years ago so I have no clue if that is right or just a number I made up. I know I read the first four books of Harry Potter all in a single day, because I wanted to know why they were so popular (this was shortly after the fourth book came out). And I enjoyed doing it, because at the end I had done something I hadn't done before and was done with it.
Actually I have the terrible habit of keeping on reading long after I should stop. For instance, when I went and grabbed those excerpts from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I actually ended up reading about a third of the book before I realized that I should stop.
I read one of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books and I hesitate to even call it fun. I certainly wouldn't call it good, for the most part.
But even though I read novels less frequently than I do fanfiction or other online stuff nowadays, I still very much love the experience. I have been trying to think of ways to approach novels more analytically, thinking of what makes them tick and seeing how they work, but it's slow going. For instance, I'm much less clear on the form of Catch-22's structure than that of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Oh, and often I do try to read books that have been critically acclaimed, though I don't always agree with them after I'm done or see what they saw in the book. I'm thinking that maybe this isn't such a good idea. Maybe to gain some perspective I need to read more shlock or outright crap for contrast. Does that make sense?
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Okay, I'll give this guy another shot. Here's hoping he keeps politics out of the post this time.
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I also spent my childhood reading at the library, though I haven't read as much as you, and more regrettably, haven't managed to make a living out of it like you seem to have. I envy you a little.
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I'm not sure how to feel about this attitude. On one hand, I enjoy quite a few things that most of these book critics you speak of wouldn't give the time of day, like genre fic, fanfiction, or general geek stuff. On the other, I value the presence of experts on this medium (though people may disagree on who exactly is worthy of being treated like one) and I have also enjoyed some of the books that get praise from critics, and it really annoys me when people suggest that nobody genuinely likes them and they only praise them to make themselves look smart. That is bullshit.
There are the books you want to read, and then there are the books you want to have read.
The latter is literature, the former is fanfiction, and the overlap is a
pipe dreamrare, beautiful thing.I'm at a computer. The world is at my fingertips. But can you be more specific?
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Well, Technical Writing/Information Communication are broad terms that involve plenty of things that you have already shown yourself to be pretty good at if not masterful of already, Bad. They involve a lot of sorta vague and then sometimes very specific skill sets when it comes to communication that we frequently overlook because they are so basic. While there is a lot of info out there, I will point you to a pretty good article that is on the Art of Manliness website, covering the basics of rhetoric.
While the article focuses more on speech writing, it works very well when used for other sorts of creative writing as well. Essentially, it's about why your readers should give a damn about what they are reading and the basics of making your editors NOT hate you.
Huh. I don't know. My gut reaction was "escapism", but Georg's post describes that pretty well, and that's definitely not it.
The last book I read was Feynman's, and that was a long time ago. I read it because I wanted to know more about him. For two years after that, I read exclusively for news and education. Then pony came along, and it was (in order) backstory, escapism, comedy, cool clone concept, and a whole mess of things.
Programming, hacking, breaking things in beautiful and intricate ways all outclass reading as far as "highest of highs" goes. Nothing trumps the euphoria of trumping everyone else. Not by a long, long shot. But those things are so god damned stressful when they're not working in your favor, and they're so god damned addictive. And when they are working in your favor, when the rewards of a day's or week's or month's work overwhelm you all at once, it's so god damned aggravating feeling so good about something no one around you understands.
Reading isn't stressful. It's one of the few things I do that can be exciting without ever getting stressful. It can have lasting consequences, and it'll always be "just" in my head or "just" on this pony site, and if I want to get away from something I've read, I can just read something else. It can pull my focus away from everything, more thoroughly and reliably than anything else. It's always there, and if I feel good about something I've read then I can tell people about it, and they can understand that and feel just as good. It's like that final piece of the puzzle, seeing people that are just as happy as me for the same reason as me. Nothing before pony has ever given me that.
I get what you mean by reading novels instead of clancy or jordan or pony leaves you more full, and sticks to the mind better. A handfull of pony authors stick with me like the better novels do. But then again, pony is more intellectually filling than playing videogames or watching netflix, so there's that. Reading fanfiction feels like making concrete progress moreso than reading a dud dead tree book because even if the story turns out to be bad it gives a better appreciation when a good fic does a better job at a character or premise.
Why I read changes on the book I'm reading. Some I read simply for enjoyments (see: A Song of Ice and Fire series); some for enjoyment and to learn more about the craft (What up, Stephen King?); and others I read because they allow me to stretch beyond myself and grow.
As a loose example, take Tim Winton's Cloudstreet. If you don't know, which you probably won't if you're not Australian, Tim Winton writes about places and the people that inhabit them, capturing the spirit of an area and using it to present stories about growth and change. Cloudstreet takes place in my home city of Perth and follows the tale of two fundamentally different but down-on-their-luck families who move into number Number One Cloud Street, a house haunted by the ghost of an aboriginal girl part of the 'stolen generation' and the ghost of the white lady who kept her there.
While it is a fantastic story with rich characters, dialogue and thematic exploration, it's not a story that I could read for the fun of it. It demanded too much attention for that.
And yet, I can safely say that I derived untold amounts of pleasure from that book. It was engaging. It offered me a window into the culture of my parents, my grandparents. It snared my heart and, page by page, reeled it in. I am infinitely grateful that I bought it for two dollars at a book fair (two dollars!).
With that in mind, my only response is that there is no singular reason to read. To try simplify it down to that is to slight the act of it.
I read for fun; I read to understand writing; I read to understand myself and others. It all depends on what the material demands of me.
For me, reading is like you found your real place and creativity under all the real-world problems. Once you got the right book, you can solve the troubles that you have in relation to the problem the main character has to solve.
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It's not that I make a living out of reading, but rather that constantly reading about what is new in my field of choice is a necessity if I'm to continue making a living
Which touches another aspect I didn't mention earlier: reading for me is entertaining mostly when I'm not feeling forced to read, when I'm reading just because. When I am feeling forced to read, such as when reading almost anything at work, it ceases being entertaining even if I would have otherwise enjoyed reading it on my spare time.
Thankfully for when that happens, I'm a fast reader. Not as fast as some people here - I needed a day and half to read the first four Harry Potter books when I first found about them - but fast enough that I can quickly get through anything I must read for work.
I read for the same reason I eat: because if I didn't I would waste away.
And as with eating there are legions ready to tell me I should be consuming this not that. As with eating, they can't all be right.
EDIT: And I'm sure I'm just as bad as they are, in that regard.
Sometimes I read fiction for research. How to do it, how not to do it, basically the same thing you do with all those analysis/breakdown posts.
Sometimes I read just to explore ideas, to learn more about the world and the universe, to stand in someone else's shoes.
And then sometimes I just read to escape the tedium of real life.
It's a great way to pass some free time. However, I tend to get less and less of that luxury.
As much as I like reading, I can always find something more interesting (if less productive
) at home. But I spend nearly two hours 5 days of the the week in means of public transportation (trains, mostly), and I could not imagine a better way to make trips to and from work shorter and less tedious than with a good book to read.
Well, that was before I joined the herd, actually.
But then I replaced published books with fanfics so I didn't lose that much. 
Recently though, I replaced reading fanfics with letting my imagination run wild and writing some stuff myself. It is barely on a level that won't make your eyes bleed and your brain vomit inside your skull 
but I like to persuade myself I'm at least improving my writing skills (not to mention English). 
As in, you want to write a novel? Or do you mean short stories, or plays, or tv scripts or comic books or...?
All that garbage I wrote before about entertainment and learning and stuff? Ignore it.
Truth is I read because I'm an addict. I discovered this when I thought about closing my browser so I could go get some work done instead. I've got 1400+ items in my read later, and hundreds upon hundreds of tabs across god-knows-how-many browser sessions. It's like I can't not read.
Oh, sure, I've got "standards". But probably my standards could be a hundred times as strict and I'd never run out of stuff to read.
But the most interesting thing in this post is your "going pro". You're gonna let us all know when something you wrote gets actually published, right?
Also, did you see my thought experiment of post-reading vs. programing?
1873153 Also, did you see my thought experiment of post-reading vs. programing?
I know you were talking to Bad Horse, but I saw it and didn't know what to make of it. For the coding problems I've done, most of my time spent was in understanding the problem. Once you understand a problem, it's almost always trivial to solve (assuming the problem was given as a challenge with a known solution). So for those, solving the problem can be seen as "proving" that you understand what was written in the same way as whoever created the problem. There's no such proof for literature, but your goal is the same. Is that what you were getting at?
I was thinking about this journal entry today at work. They sent me and a lot of the store managers to a class to learn about a new computer system that's replacing the old one.
As I sat there, supremely confused with the terms they were replacing, like "shrinking" with "scrapping" and "CAO" with I don't know what the hell, and tried to read and learn from the handbook, I realized I don't like reading that much at all. Words off of learning material don't stick to me and I just end up immediately forgetting what they said.
I prefer hands on experience, though. I just don't like theoretical too much.
I asked myself, "how in the hell am I a receiving trainer if this is the case?" A bit of the training I do with newbs involves reading off cards. The rest is practical.
The same goes with reading for fun. The actual act is pretty boring for me. It's hard. Hell, I usually pick up manga or comics because of the pictures. I know immediately what I'm getting. With novels, there's a lot more effort to find out what you're getting and I usually buy those going by what I hear about them.
I don't usually reread my own comments. It's boring to read words that you yourself have already stated.
I don't like audiobooks too much. I find myself going off, doing other things and I miss out on a lot of the reading. I can't concentrate on the voices.
So why the hell am I on a fanfiction site, a place where reading is a must? This blog post really got me thinking...
I think that reading is more of a tool to me. Something that I don't put too much weight upon. It's a means to an end. I definitely take more value from a piece after reading it; the views and ideas I extract from something are what I find to be fun, I find actual reading and thus, extracting, can be boring as fuck. I have to force myself to read to some degree, minuscule or great, each time.
Something has to draw me in from the beginning or I won't read it, or at least it will be very hard for me to stick around and read it.
Learning about things I don't care about makes me drop it and yearn to read about animals or nautiluses something. Something cool.
Heh, I might have some sort of undiagnosed learning disability other than ADD from the looks of it. I'd rather not think about it, despite how depressingly humourous and grave it is.
I've learned to compensate. I am reading your masterfully crafted work, Bad Horse, after all, simply because it contains the keys for so many emotional triggers within me.
Fuck, I'm like Big Mac in all of your fucking stories.
Son of a bitch.
Before I go and kill myself by jamming a Big Mac minifigure down my throat so he's hanging onto my epiglottis, I'll leave with an amusing little story about the evils of reading time in school.
In middle school, our English teacher would set aside about half an hour to read whatever books we had checked out of the library or catch up on the classic literature we were doing in class like Of Mice and Men or Dune.
One of the boys thought it'd be hilarious to check out a Dr. Seuss book out of the school library and start reading it, and see if the teacher would notice. He did so, and his friends besides him noticed.
There was only one hall pass, so one by one, they went to the library and each checked out a Dr. Seuss book. I believe there were at least 2 copies of The Grinch and there was a fight for that One Fish, Two Fish book that amounted to more of a game of chase around the room than a fight. Mind you, it was a very Kerry chase with bags and shit knocked all over the place before the teacher told them to calm down.
Personally, I was non-conformist and checked out a copy of Nintendo Power covering Super Smash Bros. Melee. Soon, all the boys got wind of the plan and ended up going to the library. I think the girls didn't give a flying shit about our revolution and didn't participate.
The teacher eventually did notice Dr. Seuss had infiltrated his house of Herbert and Steinbeck. Nonchalantly, he got up and stared each of us boys who had checked out an exceptionally educational and, most of all, exquisite piece of literature from our middle school library. You know what he said?
"Carry on."
We then continued reading about how you should not politely step aside if someone blocks our path, how to barge into someone's house uninvited and fuck shit up while wearing a whacky hat, speculate how Viagra made the Grinch's heart grow three sizes that day, the extravagance and hubris of unicycles, and how Ganondorf was a sodding Captain Falcon clone.
The. Best.
Honestly, looking back, I have no clue why a middle school would have Dr. Seuss books or Nintendo Power. There was no elementary classes in it. Maybe they were for ESL classes, I dunno. (Oops)
Either way, it was the best school I ever went to and it was the best and only defiance of higher literature I ever participated in.
What I'm trying to say with this little story is that you should write children's books so little ones, too, may revel in the glorious suffering that is you, Bad Horse. Defy your own conformities you've put upon yourself and take a few thousand steps back so that a younger generation may learn the glories of Chaos. Trembling obeisance is how your works will be revered when they grow up and they will shout, "(real name withheld to protect the old and infirm)!" chanting and worshipping you like a prophet and leader, true and bold!
I read as a filler of time. When I have free time but no access to the internet or my projects, then I read. If I have access, then I work, study, or, as anyone here can attest, waste time on dozens of cheap-laugh sites.
That's not to say I don't love reading, I do, as my shelves of meatspace books with worn spines and millions of words read in fanfiction would imply. It's fun, sometimes amazingly fun. I've scared people in the room with my responses to some things I've read. I jumped up, Kindle in hand, with a shout of righteous indignation at how simply wrong everything was being when shit hit the fan for the third time in Game of Thrones. Rest assured, I'm much better acclimated to that by now. I just jump up and simmer.
The long and short of it is, we have a relationship born of necessity, but I do enjoy our time together.
*ramble ramble ramble* I like reading *ramble ramble ramble* Yeeaah... I thought so as well... *long breath — sighs*
Oh yes. *cough* Doing some adding in afterthought here, but what the hell?
Regarding fast-reading: I've ditched that approach years ago. Never saw it beneficial to the experience of reading. Reading shouldn't necessarily be slow but I've found that, for me, reading is deeper, more involving, when giving it some extra time. It also gives rest to me, knowing that I've given myself some time trying to understand and also perceive what's actually being said.
I'm well aware of the fact that one can train ones perception so to enable oneself to pick up the inferred and subtle meanings. Just read faster and your mind will, eventually, get the cinch of it.
I avoid it if I can; love to ‘feel’ the prose and ‘hear’ the sound of it. It's a great way of experiencing the style of the author, as it adds, often, a telling character to the narrative as well as it teaches approaches to style.
1871790 I mostly want to write short stories. But here's how things supposedly typically work out in dollars per hour (figures guesstimated from various sources, including Writer's Guild agreements with American studios & the BBC), supposing you sell something:
Hours $ $/hr
15k-word short story: 60 750 12.5
80k-word novel: 400 10000 25
32-page comic script: 20? 3000 150? (DC or Marvel)
1/2hr TV script, 22 pages:
UK (BBC): 80 7000 87.5
US: 80 10000 125
2-hour movie script:
indy: 160 5000 31
studio: 240 100000 417
These dollar/hour figures are too high, because writers have to do all sorts of other stuff that isn't counted in those hours (find an agent, negotiate contracts, network, find jobs, speaking tours, paperwork, insurance, quarterly estimated tax filings, free rewrites that they're not supposed to do according to WGA rules), and they have costs taken out of those $ (agent's 10%, manager's 10%, taxes, legal fees, guild membership).
1874992 I read your comment backwards, from the bottom up, because I stupidly sort comments oldest-first. I guessed you were the likely author pretty quickly. "Dark whimsy", maybe?
They're different--solving a problem is a personal accomplishment, and often has one or more sudden epiphanies, failures, and successes. It's more like competitive sports. The feeling of having read is more like the feeling of having exercised.
1880451
i.imgur.com/cvqOhTG.jpg
i.imgur.com/m0Q9w2I.jpg
I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe your intuition is off.
"Dark Whimsy..." I'm liking that term.
1881646 I see my reply has been mis-routed to a parallel universe where that comment was made by Twifight Sparkill. She was my second guess, but her prior was lower, as she hasn't been commenting on my posts lately.
I was reading some Orson Scot Card today, and I saw something that made me think of your talk about "going pro". The quote:
With your... nonconformist opinions on art, I think maybe I should be concerned for you. Good luck.
1884434 Well, if you're really alienated from society, you could just write a story about a boy who's so much smarter and more talented than everyone else, and so alienated from everybody, that he just takes things over on his own, solves their problems, and is able to turn his extra energy to dealing with his own weird psyche.
What, that's unrealistic?
I know! He'll have a really smart brother and sister, too. So it will take three of them to take over the world and solve its problems. Probably using an ancient usenet interface from the 1970s. Yeah.
1882797
Heh heh... guess it's hard to mistake the words of one who rouses the proletariat from the rooftops as those of the questioning minion of the bourgeois.
But when they're both spouting nonsense words, the lines become quite easily blurred.
How about if I told you I was Twifight Sparkill? Not buying an ounce of that? Fair enough.
Either way, I'm sure Momma Twifight will be oh so appreciative that you thought of her that she'll prolly come skipping along, giddy and so very overjoyed, ready to comment up a monsoon. And that's what really matters. I'm sure of it.
Just keep in mind you actually said her name first and not me. You know how daemonic summoning rituals work...