Being an independent author/publisher/marketer/promoter takes an inordinate amount of time, I was surprised to discover. Add in the occasional Beta review for fellow authors and a full-time day job and that leaves precious little time for reading for pleasure. However, to be a really good writer one must continue to be an active reader, so I’ve begun to deliberately carve out time to read for the fun of it.
To my dismay, I am finding it hard to turn-off my critiquing/editing brain and simply dive into the stories. What have I done to myself? I haven’t read anything uncritically for so long, I seem to have lost the knack.
The book I’m reading for pleasure, right now, is “The Psalmist” by James Lilliefors. It is a wonderfully crafted, engaging mystery with twists and turns, just the sort of thing to get lost in for a weekend, yet I find myself fixating on how a particular turn of phrase might be tweaked. Aargh!
Can anyone help me? Is there a cure for my malady? Has anyone else suffered this same affliction and recovered?
oh yeah–it drives me crazy too and so far I can’t stop doing it–but I’ve found books that are so far from my style and so unique that I just read–The Night Circus was one of these.
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I think you may have hit on the secret; to read way outside my own genre. Thanks!
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