Young Writers Society

Does any believe/ avoid reading another book whilst working their own creative writing, in fear that it will influence their work? Or distract your mind from focusing solely on your own story?
I just want to hear what people think about this. It’s just something I heard but I’m not sure if I believe it.

Hmm, I agree with you. I understand that as we read more and more books, they'd influence our writing, but I don't think it's to the extend where it affects our plan for the work in question. Unless of course, what we write is kind of a reaction to our reading, which is another case entirely.

I think if there's a reason to avoid reading a book contrasting what you've written, it's that it won't contribute to the piece at work. I'm pretty sure if someone is writing a fantasy, their preferred reading material is most likely a fantasy too to get more inspiration or ideas, but if they read something else, I think it's likely that the reading becomes just that - a reading. It doesn't affect their writing, but it also doesn't contribute to it.

So let's break your question down into parts and address those separately.

1. Does reading influence one's work?

It's tricky because it can be a good influence or bad influence for me. Or in general. Most writers are readers, simply because the two are correlated. However, reading widely when working on a book isn't always a good thing simply because it can confuse your voice with too many writing voices. I know that personally for me, I have two writer's voice I like to channel when I write. Robin Hobb and Haruki Murakami's. So when I write, I still read but I'll pick books that have a similar style to those two authors so I don't blur the writing voice I have already established with new ones.



2. Does it distract it from one's work?

Usually no, I don't think so. I find that if I don't read when I write, my creativity dry up and I get stuck. But again, with me, I tend to be selective of what I read (more so than I am on a general basis). But it also varies, I have periods where I intensely write and during those days, I tend to revisit the books and writing styles I like. And on the off days where I'm letting the ideas percolate in my head, I read a bit wider for creativity and pleasure in general.

I hope this is helped you in some ways, if you have any further questions in regards to what I've written or just in general really. Please don't hesitate to message or rep!

I used to believe that, and I notice it in my writing. For awhile I didn't read anything at all, because everything I wrote was becoming a clone of the books I reread obsessively. Then I started reading again, and it started happening again.

Then I realized it was a pointless thing to worry about.

1- That's how you learn skill. It's a principle in art that is kept under the rug by mass society but actual individual artist swears by: tracing and copying others' work genuinely helps your drawing, so long as you do it conscientiously and really study what it is you're tracing/copying.

By that I mean keeping an eye on how your arm moves, what is the proper muscle memory to draw this one particular type of composition, the steps you have to take to get your drawing to match the thing you're copying.

For writing, that means watching when you have to establish something to have it be meaningful, how to doll out information, the types of details that made the world come alive for you, or even the way the plot structure fell.

(Just don't claim it's your own original work, that's plagiarism)

2- It's going to be edited out. That's just an absolute given. Books are not a one-shot wonder. They go through five or even ten revisions before they hit print, and usually in those revisions, the other authors' styles will get weeded out.

3- Stealing others' work and distilling them down to the things you find important is what art, especially writing, is. Maggie Stiefvater has an awesome post on the topic. The thing you have to remember is there is no originality anywhere, and every core concept has been done to death— one of my anthropology professors said every culture has a Cinderella rags to riches story, because it's such a good archetype.

The trick is you have to know how to steal, which involves taking the idea and putting it through your own filter. Distill down what you enjoyed about a particular thing, dissect why it influenced you, then put your own spin on it.

What @Rosendorn said. Plus, there's this post on Tumblr about how someone got into writing by writing fanfiction - they were writing fanfiction, and someone told them it was terrible because the characters would never act that way/say that thing, so they started writing original characters because then no one could tell them that the characters weren't what the creators of the original material had in mind.

My fantasy writing originally was embarrassingly obviously inspired by Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. But eventually those stories evolved as I found my own voice and interests in writing, and now I write stuff that's not so obviously influenced by those things. Of course the voices of writers you enjoy are going to stay with you and inspire you, but somewhere in the middle of it all you find yourself.

The only time I avoid reading is when I'm revising and I start panicking because I feel like I'm making the story worse instead of better. But I only avoid reading really good books then because I already feel like a crappy writer at that point, and reading a really well-put-together book just makes it worse, and then I lose all motivation to work on my own stuff.

It's usually short-lived anyway.

I find that unless I'm reading while I'm writing, the quality of my writing suffers. It's like running a race without training beforehand; reading is exercise for the mind, and it's absolutely crucial to creativity. I always try to have a book on the go.

Yes, books absolutely do influence your work, but like Rosendorn says, that isn't a bad thing. All stories are influenced by other stories. Obviously, you can't copy the ideas of other writers, but you can toy with them, twist them, reinvent them, and suddenly you'll find you have something original. I don't know who actually said it, but I remember hearing the phrase 'poor writers borrow; good writers steal'. Stealing is the act of taking another writer's idea and completely taking ownership of it, and that, arguably, is what every writer has ever done since the beginning of time.

I do think you have to plant your feet to some extent, though. You can't let yourself become so enamoured with another novelist that you forget to tell your own story. Merely imitating another writer brings nothing fresh to the world.

Thank you everyone for your insightful knowledge. I was in much need of a more 'sanitary' viewpoint outside of my own workings! Thank you all.

I'm pretty sure the genius hivemind of YWS has already covered most of what I could say on this. My general principle is that if you see something beautiful then why not try to incorporate it into your own work? If you're worried that reading will influence your work then read more, a whole lot more and a whole greater variety. Avoiding influence makes you a product of your environment. Exploring influence gives you a choice to break out of it.

Thank you for posting! That's a really interesting question and it's been a long time since I stopped to think about it. =]

I will avoid reading anything I know might be similar. But If I'm writing a Norse Saga/Fantasy then I have no problem reading a musicians biography