Reading to write

I'm annoyed I can't get across my points to people who believe you have to read a lot to write a lot, or even well. That's total bullshit. Plenty of successful writers who boasted about their literary cache and reading history were still shit, and if they were that well-read they'd have known the difference between two homonyms. Don't ever kid yourself if a mediocre author boasts about reading the classics, it won't make you good at writing, which I think people are missing the point on.

I looked up if this was an issue for writers, and discovered Tolstoy didn't like War and Peace. That makes me feel good about never reading it, so I can say to anyone who boasts about reading it, hey, the author didn't even like the book. And, allegedly, if you sit online all day reading articles you're likely to have read more than the equivalent of that. It's a joke to say a book isn't War and Peace in terms of length, but to know the author couldn't even stand by this supposed accomplishment is fucking hilarious. Big books don't equal quality either, that's another blatant fallacy. Some of the world's shortest stories are better written than some literary tomes.

My personal issue is being too comparative. If I get hung up on the way an author decided to describe something, I get put off. It's hard enough seeing your ideas on screen coming from others, when you're reading and a passage makes you inordinately jealous and angry you couldn't personally pull that shit off, then it makes reading horrible for you. It's the same way good songwriters suffer listening to terribly written songs, or good screenwriters and directors suffer seeing shitty movies. Creation motivated by money isn't always good.

I read a lot less than I did as a kid, and I enjoyed reading in high school, it did shape how I approached my stuff, it made a noticeable difference. Soon as it came time to trying to get attention for my work, knowing shitty books were being released, full of errors no less and being of exceedingly poor quality in terms of writing, I felt defeated. I'd read pages of those books if I was hanging out in a bookstore (we don't have many left to do this, and I don't do it anymore, unless I'm curious as to what type of formatting was used that may dictate how many pages a book is - another thing readers have no comprehension, you can't tell a person how many pages your book will be until it's printed. We go by word count, something readers only have access to via ebooks or online. Your big stuffy book might only be 80 000 words, which is nothing to some writers. I know I deliberately wrote a novel just to get a proper spine, because my publisher was a cheapskate) and I'd walk out angry, or see copies in windows I passed and just got annoyed about their existence, and it completely sucks knowing bookstores still stock this shit, when back when I loved books, you wouldn't keep a book in stock for decades unless it was a reprint of a classic. I had to ask some crotchety bitch for the books I wanted before the internet. I don't even ask for books as gifts unless I want a hard copy, and I've not read a lot since I left my old job, when I used to go and get whatever I could from the mall to read since I had an hour for lunch. This was after I stopped reading after high school, but before I was being more earnest about publication, I could still read and not be terribly affected by envy. I wrote and read the least in university when I realised I could bullshit my way through a lot of classes, and when I say this, I mean I didn't even read some of the children's books. I'm not kidding, I didn't fucking bother with picture books. Plus I think my mum helped with me borrowing books for the semester rather than having to buy them. (I did read "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People"). I don't think university made me a better writer, it really made me hate writing and resent even wanting to be published at all, I went to write, I didn't even think about getting better at it there. I wrote next to nothing for five fucking years, it was a drain on my imagination, I was trying to survive academically and emotionally, even if I was financially supported. It was too hard to manage other projects and my own want to write. I had everything from high school on my computer, and thankfully I rescued it all before my disc drive died, but I don't read it and have no intention of making it better. I made maybe one exception. I think about finishing stuff by starting over, but if I dropped it, it wasn't meant to be finished.

People think writers can just write and never get stymied by their work. It happens to established authors, (leave George RR Martin alone, please), shit just doesn't work. Having an army of fans, an agent and a publisher demanding shit from you is stressful, you can see why some publishers settled for shitty books from established authors, name recognition helped. Whatever you think you know as a reader, you don't. I'm only grateful that book lovers have actually managed to call bullshit on some of the scams out there, I do feel bad for both parties being extorted purely for having a love of the art and wanting to do anything to either read the book or get it in readers' hands. I paid attention to vanities but now they get to be hybrids and people care less. I do maintain now, readers don't tend to care where their books come from if it's good. Other self-published authors are admirable mavericks to me, they're fucking with the status quo and upending the gatekeepers, so when they have to fight against other scams, I leave them to it. They have the passion and motivation I don't.