A Quote by Stephen J. Dubner
While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.
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One of the maddening ironies of writing books is that it leaves so little time for reading others'. My bedside is piled with books, but it's duty reading: books for book research, books for review. The ones I pine for are off on a shelf downstairs.
I read continually and don't understand writers who say they don't read while working on a book. For a start, a book takes me about two years to write, so there's no way I am depriving myself of reading during that time. Another thing is that reading other writers is continually inspiring - reading great writers reminds you how hard you have to work.
Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.
And while good books - even so-so books - serve both functions, if you ever have to choose one over the other, keep in mind that a book that entertains without enlightening can still be a guilty pleasure, but a book that enlightens without entertaining is algebra.
My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.
It is an admonition to myself when I am reading other people's books. Writing a book is very difficult to do, even a bad one. I try to remember that when reading someone else's work.
Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.
The trouble with calling a book a novel, well, it's not like I'm writing the same book all the time, but there is a continuity of my interests, so when I start writing a book, if I call it 'a novel,' it separates it from other books.
You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good books written by other people - that's the key. You don't want to worry too much about other people's responses to your work, not during the writing and not after. You just need to read and write, and keep going.
If you think reading a book is hard, you should try writing one. Because it's even harder. It's still not as hard as writing a game, though. If you discount the purely visual pop-up parts, a book is made almost entirely of words. As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points.
As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me.
While reading 'David Copperfield' in the middle of the night - probably because of the light, I had insomnia for the first time - I looked out of the window and thought, 'If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do.'
I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening books or facts or realizations that put a book in another light and make it different and richer the second or the third time.
I usually have about four books on the go - a bedside book, a lavatory book, a downstairs book, and the book in my study that I read sneakily while I should be writing. Short stories for the lavatory, obviously.
It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.
I began writing books after speaking for several years and I realize that when you have a written book people think that you're smarter than you really are if I can joke. But it's interesting. People will buy your book and hire you without reading the book just because you have a book and you have a book on a subject that they think is of interest to themselves or e to their company.
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