Most writer’s have heard Stephen King’s famous writing advice.
I’ve read Stephen King’s book On Writing. It’s an interest read, though I confess, I haven’t reread it since 2008.
5 Reasons I’m Ignoring Stephen King’s Advice
1. Consuming is Easier than Creating
It’s not easy to admit, but I can be lazy. Reading is easy. Writing, at least for me, is work. Hard work. If allow myself to be lured in by this, I will spend all of my time reading.
2. Time Is Scarce Commodity
I’m not saying I don’t read. I read a lot. But I don’t read nearly as much as he recommends. By the time he wrote On Writing, he’d been a full time author longer than I’d been alive. It’s a lot easier to say you don’t have the time to write if you don’t have the time to read voraciously when writing is your day job.
3. I Lose My “Voice”
Voice is an author’s unique way of writing. It changes over time, grows, matures, but it still is what makes their work unique.
But when I read a lot of another author, I see their voice bleeding into my work. May not be a big deal if I’m reading someone like Tessa Dare who I’d love to emulate, but…
4. My Favorite Genre Can Be “Spotty”
I love fantasy romance, but there are a lot of newer authors in the genre. That can be both fabulous and awful. I can find some really great stuff out there, and then some not so great stuff. One book I got 25% of the way through and finally gave up because errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling kept yanking me out of an already mediocre story.
5. Learn by Doing
As great as reading is, and as much as I love it (I will NOT admit how many times I’ve gone to bed late because I was reading), reading only gets me part way there. I also need to apply bottom to chair and write. I’d rather have the brain surgeon that’s performed 3,000 successful surgeries as my doctor than the one that has read about it 5,000 times. It’s a skill, and for me, sometimes the only way to learn it is to do it.
I’ll keep reading my couple of books a month and make time to write.
How about you? Ever ignore expert advice? Why or why not?
I take all advice on writing with a grain of salt. Writing is an ART, and as with all art, there’s no one best way that works universally or for everyone. Pick and choose the advice that works for you and leave the rest for others… It may work for them.
King has some good advice for many and few that don’t work for me. It’s the same with all my literary heroes, and that’s okay as I’m not Stephen King or anyone else… and they’re not Jason H. Abbott. 😉
You have a fabulous point!
The best advice I ever read was “Never ever speak in absolutes.”
The other was “be careful hitting return when writing a comment.”
Anyway, King’s advice is useful and he ought to know a thing or too, but he sure likes to make proclamations.
Reading makes me want to write. When I stop, my writing tends to slow too. Since I have to bounce from coding, to writing non-fiction, to writing fiction, I need to play a balancing game.
For me reading has helped developed my voice and I’ve never worried about other voices drowning out my own. Someone once said “Anne Lamott? Margaret Atwood?” something along the lines of “keep the voices you want to hear in your head” as advice for developing your own. I try to do that by reading people like Gaiman, Chabon, and Tom Wolfe. Not because I think I can ever sound like them, but I might be able to put in one sentence out of 50 that approaches their level.
I think my issue is the quality of what I read.
Maybe it would be better if I read nothing but Tessa Dare. She doesn’t write in my preferred genre, and while there are some good writers in it, nothing to that level I can consistently find.
Many of us here in blogland read every day–reading others’ blogs “counts” in my opinion. I can learn something useful from almost every blog I read. Cheers!
I agree!!
I’m glad I’m not the only one!
I ignore the advice to write every day. I tried it, but trying to force a few words each day felt like torture after a couple of weeks, and it made me less enthusiastic about my project. I’ll stick to writing three or four times a week, because that’s what works for me 🙂
Exactly!
Art is so individual, and so our the lives of the people creating it. What works for one doesn’t usually work for anyone else. We all have to find out way.
I think that’s why there are so many books and blogs on writing. There are that many different ways to get there.
I get around the time issue by listening to audiobooks as I do errands etc