My name is Kim and I am a writer junkie.
Some people follow musicians (groupies) and some purchase art in monetary quantities that are astounding. Me? I hang on every word spoken or written by authors. Oh, and if they are handing out advice about how to be a better writer? I am REALLY listening.
I love being a groupie and art lover, too, (photography especially!) but that’s another post.
Does anyone out there feel me? The symptoms of this addiction are:
1. Reading every book by an author you absolutely love regardless as to whether it is a novel or a booklet on Ways to Train Your Parakeet,
2. Following them around the net, ie. friending them on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.
3. Surfing to find where they are going to have a reading, or be on an Internet site.
So, there you have it. My guilty pleasure is reading and following the authors that I love. It’s been such great fun to have the radio show so that I can find and love even more writers, too. It’s amazing how they will share their knowledge with others and since I am a writer also, with me. I love commiserating over plot holes and characters that won’t behave.
Jodi mentioned she visualizes her reader as she writes, and she tries to write just for them. As a reader, I appreciated that a lot. I also learned something about writing for an audience.
This is why I love MB4 so much. We can talk about our writing/reading addiction and everyone knows what we mean!
3 comments:
Kim, I'm so with you on this. Problem is, I'm following around guys who usually died a while back. My addictions involve works by James D. MacDonald, Dick Francis, Rex Stout, and the like. I'm rereading my Dick Francis novels now and am remembering precisely why I've purchases and hoarded them with glee. Damn, he's good. Just read Ten Pound Penalty again and wow - what a great example of story telling! 'Course I'm the same way with Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series... that man can WRITE!
Heh. I'm in the twelve-step writer addiction recovery program ... :-)
I used to obsess. I used to read every single thing I could get my hands on by certain writers I loved. But then, one of them let me down. Really, really hard. So I stopped to reconsider my priorities, and started trying to put a few filters on my obsessions.
It's a slow process, but I'm getting there. Objectivity is a good thing.
On the other hand - it's great that the internet allows us so much more access to writers we enjoy. It makes me happy when I can e-mail an author and say "I loved your book" - and they actually e-mail me back and say thanks. It's awesome!
i feel this way about joyce carol oates. nice post.
~maria
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