You all know that pleasure gets pushed aside during the school year. People have more filled schedules and their time gets taken up by classes and other activities like Baseball and Ice Skating. There seems to be no time to write and in our efforts to write something, the quality can sometimes be sacrificed.
So what do you do?
As you've probably realized, it gets harder to read pleasure books throughout the school year, and good ones too. You don't want to read something long that takes some thinking, you want to read a quick 130 page story about a girl and her friend-drama. Or something along those lines. Who's going to be finishing the Austen collection over the school year? If this is you, congratulations, give yourself a pat on the back. Anyway, it's harder to read good books which means that it's harder to write good books.
I have one simple remedy for this. Read better books. Invest your time in four really awesome and well-written books over the summer rather than ten so-so books. You could make a reading list so you know what you're doing, it doesn't have to be in depth, but something where you do know what you're doing.
You could ask your mom or dad or older siblings or cousins (you get the point) what they read when they were younger. Ask them some of their favorite books and which ones were the best written.
Broaden your horizons. Reading different genres of books can really help you. Then you can learn the twists and turns of different types of books and different authors. It's like a game.
Read some of the Newberry Medal or Newberry Honor winners. You'll find some good books in there and some that are relatively old.
You know those books that you really wanted to read a while ago? Yeah, what are they called...classics? Oftentimes, classics are classic because they're classically good. People remember them and want to read them to their kids and so on.
See? There are tons of ways to read good books and that will help you keep up the good writing.
Any thoughts? Questions? Disarrangement's? I'd love to hear about them!
I'd read the Jane Austen collection! But I'm so weird I have them sitting on my bedroom desk so I can admire them. Or be jealous that she could write so well.
ReplyDeleteWe have a whole bookshelf of classic books. I'm trying to work my way through the Bronte sisters books at the moment.
It is so hard to find writing time during the term isn't it? I sometime find that in between schoolwork, choir rehearsals, music practices and soccer games there isn't always time for it.
I've managed to solve that in part by getting up fifteen minutes earlier every morning. Then I get in some extra writing time then, so that if I don't have any time during the rest of the day, I'll have at least done fifteen minutes. I have an added advantage that I can type pretty quickly so it only takes me half an hour or so to punch out a thousand words.
Thanks for writing this post, and this blog. I always love reading every post you put up. They're always so helpful.