Been a while since I tossed a question out here. But I was wondering, do you find your writing changing with your reading habits? I've been reading more of what's tagged literary. Writers like Dorothy Allison and Daniel Woodrell. And I find little bits of their lushness of language creeping into my stories. Now, I'm not on their level, and probably never will be, but I like what's growing in my writing.
How about you, does your writing reflect what you're reading? And do you like when this happens?
8 comments:
Sandra, I won’t say my writing (the little there is) reflects what I am reading but I do wish I could write like some of the authors I have read, such as, P.G. Wodehouse, Anthony Trollope, W. Somerset Maugham, and even G.B. Shaw whose abridged essays and stories in our school English text book had me in awe.
Yes, some writers' words are so elegant that you wish you could bottle that wonderful and take a teaspoonful everytime you sit down to write.
I'd say it used to, but I don't think it does very much now. I've been doing it long enough so that what comes out always sounds like me these days. But when I first started writing I definitely changed with the material I was reading.
I've always had to stay away from Robert Parker when I'm writing dialogue. It all starts sounding like Spenser and Hawk verbally sparing.
I'm fortunate enough that because my reading has been so sporadic for the past couple of years, no writer has influenced my writing.
So everything comes out as being me, influenced only by the people I come into contact with on a daily basis.
Without a doubt although I was told in writing classes when I matured as a writer that wouldn't happen. But it does after 15 years still. I guess I am slow to mature.
Definitely. I tend to either write hardboiled, or what I call "tall tale," like telling a story with a beer in your hand, and if I'm reading someone very hardboiled it is difficult to get out of that groove, and vice versa.
It's not mimicking the writer per se, but when your subconscious mood is effected, you'll find your thoughts drifting wherever it's going.
I'm always reading something, G, so it's difficult not to find the style or phrasing creeping into my own stories.
Yes, it is difficult not to try and imitate someone you admire, Patti. I've always felt that my writing lacked those great descriptive phases I find in much of literary fiction, so I read and try to latch onto some of what I admire.
I do that when I write Westerns, Thomas. The older shorts have such a laid back feeling to them and I try to capture that when I'm writing in the Western genre. So it does help reading in the genre while you're writing.
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