Reading bad books, and the paths to wisdom.

Being a writer I have learned through countless hours of reading, advice from every writer I could find on the Internet, from Harlan Ellison, to the YA Rebels on YouTube, to Stephen King, that in order to be a good writer one must read. And read as much, and as frequently as possible.

Now with being dyslexic, it makes reading a bit difficult, and at times challenging. But I do, and I read authors that I both admire, and believe I can learn something from. My favorite types of reading are detective novels, science-fiction fantasy, I've even read Bukowski, and not to impress or seem pretentious but because the man's personal philosophy and his personal history are incredibly interesting and filled with the most basic human need to be both recognized and left alone. The oddest and sweetest dichotomy I think men of the 20th century could have. The man is brilliant, depraved, brave, and one of the more honest writers I've read.

That being said…

To read a bad book, is very much like asking someone, and paying them, to roughly beat you about the ears, neck, and shoulders for an undetermined amount of time. And the level of brutality involved in the beating, varies upon the degree to which the writing is bad.  And it is the type of beating that leaves you flinching whenever you reach for another book. Unless it's a book from a writer that has never let you down, and even on his worst day will write an entertaining book that you will put your hard-earned cash in the palm of an eager bookseller.

It is my sincere hope, that the amount of bad writing that I create will only be seen by me, and then promptly deleted, and my hard drive erased beyond all recognition, so no trace of it will have ever existed.

 But I realize that I may not be at all able to control that. I will sit here and try to write the most accurate depiction of what I see in my head, trying to remove myself from the process and just let the characters do with they need to do. I can be as persnickety precise with my punctuation, diction, structure, plot, and all of the other things that are actually in my control, and still pump out crap book. Not intentionally crappy mind you, but a book that a person will pick up, read the 1st 5 pages, sniff to see where the excremental smell is coming from, and put the book down and never buy it. From all I've read it seems the one bit of advice no writer can ever give you is how to write a bestseller, or how to convince the reader to buy your book.

Being a writer is a crapshoot, in fact being an artist in any medium needing commerce to survive, takes the dice and throws them blindly. Which is another realization that I've only recently come to, write for love. Write for the love of writing and creating, and the knowledge that you are doing something that you were meant to do, not an occupation or job of work.

So, I have absolutely no problem paying my money to any writer whose book I've read. Whether the book was marginal, or bad, or utterly excremental (I hate to use a word twice, but it fits each time), I will read it I will take what I can from it, and I will try not to make any of the mistakes I might find therein. And I will also endeavor not to steal any of the best pieces, at least not intentionally.