Category Archives: Reading

What Motivates My Reading Choices?

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The Insecure Writer’s Support Group

The question being asked this month for March is: Everyone has a favorite genre or genres to write. But what about your reading preferences? Do you read widely or only within the genre(s) you create stories for? What motivates your reading choice?

What Motivates My Reading Choices?

When I was a teenager, I loved reading big fictional stories like Gone with the Wind, Hawaii, Forever Amber, and mysteries, especially those with ghosts.

In my 20s, I added romances, historical fiction, gothics, and everything nonfiction: different cultures, science, how-to everything but especially on how-to improve myself mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. How-to write, how-to raise children, how-to get along with difficult people, how to understand men, how to grow better gardens, how-to make repairs on just about anything. Mysteries and nonfiction outpaced everything I read, though. All of these genres continued through my 30s.

In my 40s, I was reading everything to do with screenwriting: about craft, how to pitch, how to write treatments, and so forth, and reading lots of other scripts. As I had four, sometimes five, different part-time jobs, plus taking care of the house and the family, plus I was writing whenever I wasn’t working, I had little time for any real recreational reading.

In my 50s, I was reading textbooks and the classics, poetry, and any other literature assigned. I was back in school, taking piles of literature classes, and writing lots of papers. I was too tired to read much of anything not assigned. Though, I will admit, during vacations and holidays when the homework was done, I would read about mystics, being an intuitive, how to grow my psychic skills, about dragons and faeries. I took a year-long class that met once a month that unlocked and place in the forefront my intuitive skills that had been there all along and had been revealing themselves in the past decades.

I will say that my own writing changed immensely because of those classics and all the other literature assigned, which I never would have picked up on my own. As a result, both my writing skills and my literature knowledge went broader and deeper, at the same time.

Now in my 60s, I’m in a library book club where I’m reading literary best-sellers, and I’ve returned to my first real love—mysteries. I’m still reading the nonfiction books where I can raise my vibrational energy, grow my psychic abilities, and about science where other entities can live beside us—it really is all about the vibrational energies.

I continue to be fascinated with dragons and faeries and have a huge collection of books about both. Since I’ve written a book that has a dragon—Grendel’s Mother—even though she, the dragon, doesn’t have a huge role, I’m planning a book that features faeries as a culture living amongst humans and having to connect with them…for reasons of…well, I’m not revealing that plotline right now. <wink>

Because I know too much about how mysteries are constructed, I love a good mystery that can surprise me and keep me hooked page after page. They’re rare books.

I loved reading The Martian. That book was a page turner for me. I loved the science. Another page turner is Pretty Little Wife, a mystery with a twist because you know who did it right away. The problem is that the body disappeared and now even the killer doesn’t know what happened.

Normally, I’ll skip to the end of any book to see how it ends and then I’m analyzing the plot as I read to learn of its creation. Pretty Little Wife was the first book in a long time where I didn’t skip to the end. I wanted to be surprised.

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Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time – and return comments. This group is all about connecting!

Six Reasons That Will Make Me Stop Reading Your Book

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The Insecure Writer’s Support Group

The question being asked this month is: Being a writer, when you’re reading someone else’s work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people’s books?

Six Reasons That Will Make Me Stop Reading Your Book

1) Punctuation and Grammar errors – I can live with a few errors here or there, but to have errors on every page? No.

2) Shallow characters – I don’t want to experience characters as if I’m watching them on stage and I’m in the back row seats, watching from a distance. I want to experience the characters as if I’m in their skin, feeling what they’re feeling. Characters with depth have wounds, secrets, and don’t talk on the nose. I love characters who banter and use subtext, meaning they may be talking about eating a hot fudge sundae, but what they’re really talking about is their relationship… or lack of one.

3) Plot holes – I can suspend my disbelief easily enough to go along with the character’s world, but I don’t like being yanked out of the reading and the story several times especially in the beginning because of the lack of inconsistencies or feasibilities given the world that was created.

4) Backstory – There’s nothing worse than having to slog through pages and pages of backstory before the action starts. I want a story that starts at the moment when the main character’s world changed. I want backstory that’s provided in small crumb-like reveals sprinkled here and there either through dialogue or a sentence or two of introspection that explains a character’s motivation.

5) Lack of research – I’m one of those readers who knows a little about a lot. If something doesn’t sound right, I’ll research it. For example, one author was using a zippered valise twenty years before zippers were invented. Another author had a character shooting a certain brand of rifle several years before its existence.

6) Telling – I’m one of those readers who wants action and dialogue. I enjoy fast reads because they keep me hooked, turning the pages, and not wanting to put the book down until I’m finished. If I’m able to put down the book because I’m bored, there’s a good chance I won’t be picking it up again. Showing is about eliminating wordiness, strings of little words, adverbs and adjectives, and using great verbs, instead.

Every now and then, I’ll find a great book that tells more than it provides action and has huge chunks of backstory, but those books are rare and they’re often award-winning books. Recently, such a book for me was Achille’s Song. Its characters made up for the huge chunks of backstory, and the story’s subject matter–Troy, mythology, and an untypical love affair—kept me hooked, along with the writer’s voice, which was lyrical and beautiful.

Give me a well-proofed, well-researched book with lots of action, no plot holes, characters that makes me want to know them better and experience their stories alongside them, great dialogue, and scenes that makes me laugh aloud, cry, sigh, or give me goosebumps, and I’ll finish your book. In fact, I could become your fan forever.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time – and return comments. This group is all about connecting!

It’s Read an eBook Week – March 1-7: What are you reading?

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The Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG)

Rather than answer the March 4 question posed by the group, I’ve chosen to write about this week’s national recognition on eReading.

It’s Read an eBook Week – March 1-7: What are you reading?

 Already, we’re into the third month of a new year. A year where I was going to do more writing and be more organized with my reading.

I have three shelves of double-stacked to-be-read (TBR) books. These are the remainders from last year’s thinning from fives shelves, where I got rid of books I knew I’d never read simply because my tastes have changed over time.

My TBR pile, though, isn’t going down quickly enough to suit me. I think I read only three of them last year, and I have just as many books on my Kindle, which I haven’t touched lately.

And now today, I learned that this week, March 1-7, is Read an eBook Week. Did you know that?

Are you like me with a huge assortment of books on your eReader?

So, here I am again, revisiting my wanting to do better.

And I am. One book at a time.

Right now, I’m finishing Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen. An excellent novel about Mrs. Francis Osgood, a poet who fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe and he with her. Osgood, too, became friends with his wife, Virginia, his first cousin whom he married when she was 13 and he was 26. A petite woman who behind the beautiful skirts and seemingly gentile manners was a conniving, jealous creature who wished harm on others, especially Mrs. Osgood–or was she?

Mrs. Poe has been a book difficult to put down. I highly recommend it including the notes at the end of the book.

Now finished, I need to dig into my TBR pile again. What other goodies lurk there for my reading pleasure?

So, what are you reading? Did it come out of your TBR pile?

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Insecure Writers Support Group BadgePurpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time – and return comments. This group is all about connecting!