Always a reader, never a writer, living with being the receptive half of the equation |
 Apr 12 2008, 09:31 PM
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Knight Bus Driver in Training Posts: 592 Joined: 12:53pm July 21, 2005   |
I've been coming to terms with the fact that while I'm a very good reader of fiction, I probably won't ever be a writer of stories.
JKR really inspired me, because it seemed like she gave herself this extraordinary amount of time to develop plotlines and details for the entire series before sitting down to write book one. At first I thought that giving myself the time to work out the story before writing it would get me past the lostness I feel when I sit down to write fiction. Most of my favorite fiction use metaphors like "a wind that blows into you" or "I'm a fossil hunter, carefully digging up something that's already there and buried" to describe the writing process. I've had that sensation, certainly, while writing nonfiction, that something other than my top-of-mind-awareness is doing the heavy lifting. But I can't find stories. I can try to make them up, in advance of writing them, but they come out leaden and plotted, in the worst sense of the word. I'll never be an Olympic gymnast, or a painter, or a scientist, but I'm completely comfortable with that. Yet somehow, as a reader, I feel a bit incomplete knowing I'm dependent on other people to write stories for me! Fortunately, there's no shortage of them. So I ask you: what's the reader's job? Is there a yin that the writer's yang needs? (I think not. It's nice to be read, but not necessary. Ask Emily Dickinson.) |
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