Stephen King once said something like: ‘if you are not a great reader, you will find writing difficult.’ This makes a lot of sense; I concur with the master of all matters creepy.<\/p>\n
When working against a deadline that remains months out, budgeting time every few days to read pages of a published work in a different genre can be very constructive. Just seeing the words in print of another is a validation of sorts for a project, because it proves in a material way what very few ever say to a writer, tons of books are published all the time, and that writing a book that sees daylight is possible. Hey! Look they did it too.<\/i><\/p>\n
Reading is also a reminder that novels vary in quality and sensibility. There’s the great, the good, the mediocre and the one where the author quit. Most books are at least good with a touch of filler and a moment of brilliance. A genuine masterpiece is rare and is the goal of very few writers. For every The Dive from Clausen’s Pier<\/a>, there is Blood Canticle.<\/a><\/p>\n Ultimately, I won’t serve as the judge and jury of my books. That will be a critic’s job. So effort spent comparing my stories to another writer is a waste of effort. They have their act, I have mine. The fact that I’ll get compared at all means I hit the primary goal to sell my words.<\/p>\n Side point – that new Coldplay hit about birds flying at the speed of sound is great, even if I can only make out parts of the chorus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stephen King once said something like: ‘if you are not a great reader, you will find writing difficult.’ This makes a lot of sense; I concur with the master of all matters creepy. When working against a deadline that remains months out, budgeting time every few days to read pages of a published work in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}