I was recently amused by an op-ed in the NY Times (5/5/19) written by a novelist. I neither know this writer nor his books. That’s not important. What surprised me was the admission that he wasn’t an avid reader. He seemed to prefer watching Netflix to reading, only returning to the latter for any length of time when the TV network went down.

I probably shouldn’t criticize, but how can you be a writer without being an avid reader? OK, maybe not an avid reader, but someone who at least sits down with a book and reads for long stretches of time instead of watching mind-numbing TV?

“Whoa!” you say. “People can spend their leisure time any way they see fit!” I agree. A person can do anything they want with their spare time, some things unmentionable in this PG-13 blog—hopefully not illegal (the definition of that seems to change all the time). But, in my naiveté, I always assumed authors tell stories because they love story telling. The want to give to the world new stories because they’re hooked on reading others’ stories.

To put a fine point on it: how can authors write good mysteries, for example, if they haven’t read good mysteries to learn how those stories are told? Same for thrillers and so forth. Most of my interviewees have expressed that opinion in one way or another, so I’m not alone in stating that you can’t write well if you haven’t read enough to see how it’s done.

To be fair, maybe that author of the op-ed read a lot before he started to write novels, so he has some idea about how books in his genre used to be written. But the italicized words indicate the same general theme: he has no way of knowing how today’s books are being written. Readers tastes evolve. While some readers only follow certain authors, avid readers often try new ones and new books. I’m often reading a new author and say to myself, “That’s a cool way to do that,” or “That’s a new technique I should try.”

In a previous post, I related how I saw James Patterson mix first and third person in the same book. I’m not plagiarizing Patterson when I do this; I just learned a writing trick from him to use in my own writing by reading his books. If I only wrote my books and ignored others’, this could never happen.

It’s surprising that the op-ed writer is distracted by NetFlix. Distractions abound nowadays, so readership is declining everywhere. It’s surprising that a writer is distracted, though. I watch TV to relax too, but not that much. My preferred shows are news programs and PBS shows like “Nature” and “Nova,” but I’ll watch a decent drama too (and criticize the screenwriters—if they’re too bad, I turn it off). But I’ll reach for my Kindle in a jiffy if what’s on TV is mind-numbing junk.

Am I a member of an endangered species? I don’t think so. Lots of people are avid readers still. I just thought that group contained all authors. You learn something every day.

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Comments are always welcome.

Mind Games. You know A. B. Carolan as the writer of The Secret Lab and The Secret of the Urns. Those novels are sci-fi mysteries for young adults (and adults who are young at heart). In Mind Games, A. B. tells a new story that’s set a bit farther into the future than his first two books. Della Dos Toros is a young girl with psi powers living in the Dark Domes of the planet Sanctuary. Her adopted father doesn’t let her use those powers, but she must do so to find his killer. This story about ESP and androids adds another action-packed novel to the ABC Sci-Fi Mystery series. Just published and available in both print and ebook versions from Amazon and ebook version from Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 16th, 2019 at 3:30 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.