How My Reading and Writing Work in Harmony

Okay, so today I'm going to tell all you people how reading has really affected the way I write. I read as much as a write, maybe even more. (Later I will make a post on my top favorite books I have read, but one step at a time.)

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1. Thank the Generations Before Me

First of all, there are a lot of things you can take from other writers. I don't mean literally take, I mean that you can see what other people have done, and you can bend it to fit your writing. I have learned a lot of techniques by doing this, and it really helps you.

But of course, there are those really bad books that you never finish because they're so boring. You can learn what not to do by other writers, too.

2. "Precision of Language!"
Hopefully some of y'all will get that reference up there...

Metaphors, personification, similes, alliteration... reading shows you how to say things in more eloquently. My teacher always told me to show, don't tell. This basically means instead of saying "It was raining," you can say, "Long streams of water ran down the windowpane," or something like that.

You can also get better words for things from books. For instance, "atrocious" is a better word for "bad."

3. It Will Take Forever
So everyone has reread a favorite book. Have you ever noticed that each time you read it, you realize how things are interconnected, how each little detail is related to the main idea? Then you think to yourself, "Wow, this must have taken forever to plan out and write!"

Yeah. It does. You should see how many unfinished stories I have collected over the past year. It's atrocious.

But somehow it teaches you to keep pushing. (I just haven't quite mastered that skill yet, but hey! I'm getting there.) It makes you feel great when you actually do finish something, if you're like me. It also shows you structural things that are very important to your writing.

I hope you liked my second non-writing post! (I will post another one of those soon, by the way.) Thanks for reading!   

The History of Writing (for me, at least.)

I used to hate to write.

There, I said it. I used to think it was one of the most boring things you could do. I liked to read, though, but I guess I thought you had to have no life or you had to be crazy to actually write a book.

I remember in second grade I would ask my dad, "What do you think I'll be when I grow up?" I crossed my fingers and prayed that he would say, "Singer," because apparently, that was what everyone wanted to be at age seven.

Instantly Dad would say writer. My heart would sink and I would scowl and try to tell him to pick something else, but he would just keep on saying the same thing. I tried over and over again to see what he would say. Writer, writer, writer.

All this time, I didn't realize that I was always writing, every day. At school I had a journal, and every morning I would write some little story about a weird, poorly drawn character. The stories were really crazy (and bad) but I really looked forward to making up the stories and sharing them with the class.

All that time, I didn't realize I was a writer. I just looked through all my spiral notebooks from second grade, and I counted three. Three completely full journals. Most people didn't even fill up one.

Some of the entries included things like, "If I could be any animal, I would be a turtle because I like to be slow," and "Did you know that cheese is mold? Well it is! Cheese is rotten milk! I know, right!"

After a while, I started to stray away from the prompts my teacher would put up on the board and I would write my own things, started with little footnotes at the bottom of the page and going on to full on, four page stories. One of the stories was what would happen if I fell out of a plane. (Apparently I sang a song the entire way down and crashed into a tree and also fed on clouds. No idea.)

My biggest story was about a girl named Gloria and her boyfriend named Sylvester. I drew a bunch of pictures of things like Sylvester's Halloween costume and Gloria and Sylvester's wedding day. I wrote long stories every day about the weird pair's crazy adventures, and introduced characters along the way, including a really fat women with facial hair named Hermes.

Everyone in my class loved it when I shared my journal, so I did it every day. I loved it. And I thought I hated it the entire time! I guess thought being a writer meant writing a book, but now I know that's not necessarily true.

Second grade came to an end, and so did my journal. I moved into a new class, leaving all of my stories behind. I started third grade, and at first I hated it. I didn't think my teachers liked me, and I didn't make friends really quick.

I had a Language Arts teacher named Mrs. F. I admit I didn't really like her right off the bat (but trust me, that has changed.) She taught me all this new stuff about writing, things I had never known. That was when I started to like writing. I had another journal that year, but I didn't write in it that much, mostly because we weren't given that much time. The things in there are a bit longer and more complicated. Fourth grade was the same way: I learned so much more and wrote so much more. I got my laptop around that time, and I filled up my Drop Box with tons of different things.

Now here I am, writing nearly every day. Now whenever my Dad says I'll be a writer, I know I will, because that is what I love. Even though it sounds kinda cheesy, I feel like being a writer is who I am.

From the Gloria and Sylvester Chronicles and beyond!