I always used to be astonished when people turned up at my writing classes brimful with the desire to bare their souls on paper, who, when I asked them what they liked to read, would say, “Oh, I don’t read much. I’m not really a reader.” Not really a reader? Not really a reader? It seems to me that the two go hand in hand. Writing, without the reading which enriches and gives it context, is pure narcissism, and that’s just for starters. As well as the sheer delight of losing yourself in a brilliant and un-pu-tdownable novel, reading offers a beginner’s guide in how to write. Look and learn! See how the masters construct a plot, or draw a character into being, or structure a sentence so that it makes your heart rise to the surface of your chest.
When I was writing my first novel, Rebecca’s Children, and making it up as I went along in every conceivable sense, if I came unstuck (which I did frequently) the agent I was with at the time, the inestimable Xandra Hardie, didn’t dish out any advice, she’d write out a short reading list for me as if it were a prescription: if you want to learn about language read Anne Rice, if you want to learn about narrative structure read Thomas Keneally, and so on. It was one of the most profound lessons I have ever learned. Any initial qualms about being unduly influenced (I should be so lucky) were quickly banished as I found out how much there was to discover. So now, when I am working on a novel, I read around it as eccentrically, elliptically and extensively as I possibly can. I’m hungry to see how other people achieve what I am attempting to do. I don’t plagiarise - where’s the interest or challenge in that - but I do try to work out forensically how a book has been put together. And it doesn’t dim my enjoyment, it’s a stimulus, it makes me want more.
Categories: Writing |