Like just about all writers, I'm a ravenous reader. It started when I was young. My mother was a school teacher and I lived in a household that encouraged learning. I was surrounded by books. I can still remember the blue and yellow hardcover Hardy Boys mysteries lying about my room, dog eared and well worn. I particularly loved adventure stories and the home spun frontier stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was fascinated with the wilderness. It was a world far removed from my own reality.
The ability to create a believable world and share it with others is clearly an ancient and universally human need. It's a desire that transcends cultures and religions. Throughout the ages human beings have weaved and shared all kinds of stories. It's a deep rooted need. After all, even the early cave paintings were stories.
In my family, a good storyteller was always well regarded. But storytelling was already a vanishing art form among us when I was a kid. Some of the old timers still could do it. My grandfather, probably the best of them all, could do it for hours and keep everyone entertained, usually around the holidays. My grandfather's vivid descriptions and uncanny comic delivery were far more entertaining than the stories he told. In a sense, he was just a good performer that made the best out of his mediocre material. Around this time in my life I noticed that good writers created fresh new worlds, filled with interesting people all the time.
I can remember the exact moment when I knew I wanted to be a writer. I had just finished reading John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." I was nine years old. The story transported me to another time and place in the same way that Alexandre Dumas or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle transported me with their great stories. But Steinbeck struck a unique chord with me. He had created something I considered visceral. His use of words stimulated my senses of hearing and smell, sight and sound. I was deeply involved in the story and its outcome. Lenny and George are still vividly real in my mind's eye, as if it were an experience I lived through and not just read about. I knew then that I wanted to wield the magic wand like Steinbeck had. I wanted to create new experiences, new landscapes and populate them with great characters.
Most of my reading these days is limited to scripts or my favorite weekly magazine, The New Yorker. But I recognize the need to fit more reading into my routine. Writers especially should make it a habit to read as many books in as many subjects as possible. Reading flavors and influences your own writing in direct and sometimes surprising and unconscious ways as well. One can never read too much. I was never one of those lightning fast readers who could consume novels seemingly at will like a fire. A novel is a considerable commitment of time on my part. But I feel that even I should manage at least 6 novels a year.
Let's agree to allow ourselves to be drunk with good writing and good reading. Let's be willing to keep our minds open to everything. Approach every moment with a sense of curiosity and wonder like we instinctively do as children. Inspiration can come from anywhere and the truth is we live under the influence of all the great writers that moved us when we were young and those that continue to move us now.
Make time to read every day and open your world up to all the new adventures and possibilities that are out there.
This week's suggested website: Trigger Street (www.triggerstreet.com) an online community of writers sharing their work and providing each other valuable feedback.
This week's writing prompt:
An Exclusive Interview with....
Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time. Now put your story, novel or screenplay's main character in the spotlight. Imagine him/her sitting with Charlie Rose, Oprah Winfrey or Larry King about to give an exclusive interview. Let yourself have fun with it. If you like, cast a famous figure from the past like Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow in the role of journalist. Imagine this host asking your character deep penetrating questions the kind that can sometimes be embarrassing or incriminating. Write for five minutes.
