I sometimes (periodically, perhaps) forget just how much what I read affects how I write. The problem is that I hate to be exacting about what I read based on how I'm writing. Lately I've been stalling out in my writing time, doing a lot of world-building and a bit of poetry when plot and prose felt like tar pits. A little of it is having come to a tricky point in Nenle, but this would be less of a problem if I felt agile when I came to it.
Last night I realized that I've been reading more verse than usual,which might explain why my prose seemed to dry up and I was starting to get drips of poetry. I put The Fairy Queen aside at the end of Book 1, because it was moving just too slowly for me. I made use of my Kindle and picked up Pope's Iliad (after, you may recall, putting down his Odyssey). That has been more agreeable. For one thing--and it feels like the sort of thing that shouldn't matter, but does--the lines are arranged in the free Kindle edition like blocks of prose. The rhythm and rhymes are still clear, but the momentum keeps up better.* Which is to say, I'm actually enjoying The Iliad, which makes it more frustrating that I apparently need to read something else.
But I do. I wish I had a better grasp of my intellectual nutrition. The Iliad lacks something that I need, but to extend the metaphor, it's not hamburger. Or, at least, not cheap hamburger.** Perhaps it is more like spinach, if I liked spinach. Broccoli?
The problem ("the" problem) is that, unlike food, I tend to read one thing until I'm done, if I can help it. I'm a fifth of the way through The Iliad and if I had my druthers that means I would keep reading it until it was done. But the month or more that would probably take me is too long to be banging my head against my writing. I need propellant. Or, to return to the food metaphor, six weeks of broccoli would be very bad for me, not least if I followed it with a month of potatoes and a (moderate) three weeks of beef.
But that's the way I read. For one thing I don't read exceedingly quickly, and for another I have safeguards in place to keep me from sinking an entire day into reading if I have anything else to do. I don't think I can read more than one narrative at a time and keep them all in my head, either; I certainly don't think I could keep the Greeks and Trojans straight during a detour through, say, Anathem.*** Last night I picked up The Lord of the Rings again, and I feel more limber already for being half a dozen pages into Chapter 1, but while I read that I'm not reading anything new.
It's a dilemma, and a frustrating one. If it were only a matter of reading what I liked it would sort itself out relatively quickly. Where I run into trouble is the things I like that don't feed my writing.
I wish the next issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction would come. That's good fuel, but it only comes every other month.
When I started this post I expected to segue into another topic by the end, but now I can't remember what it was. That may just mean there will be another post close on the heels of this one.
* It would be interesting if this were toggleable in long verse narratives. We surely have the technology, and maybe someone has already done this without my notice.
** I had a surprisingly good hamburger last night at a bar called The Heights.
*** Another thing I got for the Kindle, since the hardcover edition of Anathem weighs 80 pounds and only fits through doors standing up.
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