The best advice writers give aspiring writers is this: read. Read a lot. The thing about our species is that we learn by watching what others do. To write is to read.
Thing is, I’m an eclectic reader. And my writing, like a snowball, grows from contact with other words. I read literary fiction, I write literary fiction. I read horror, I write horror. I read humor, I write humor. My promiscuous reading leads to the sin of eclectic writing.
How do I know it’s a sin? The editors tell me so. The great priestly gatekeepers who hold the means of recognition in their genre-stained hands. Nobody knows what to make of the cross-genre man. The transgender are fine. Encouraged even. But beware the cross-genre man.
As I go sinning across the internet, reading a little of this and a little of that, the snowman I’m building starts to look maybe a bit like that of Pig Pen. Did I mention I read children’s books too?
When Gene Roddenberry set a western in outer space he started a fad that would define nerdiness forever more. When Rod Serling took weird fiction and made half-hour vignettes for television audiences, the title of his show would remain on the lips of those who’d never even seen an episode until the end of time. Did editors even exist in those days?
Poe, my great hero, made horror respectable. He also single-handedly invented the detective story, thereby launching the entirely new genre of crime writing. Ah, but Poe died poor and obscure did he not? Nobody even knows why he was in Baltimore that night.
I pick up that novel by Toni Morrison. I’m not African American. I’m not even female. Yet I read. As a straight man I read about gay adventurers, sometimes even marrying aliens. Yes, I’m sinning. I should, I guess, keep to the script. What you read is what you write, after all.
Comments
Post a Comment