Reading When You're Writing - Good or Bad?

As a writer, naturally, I read. In fact, I'm one of those people who read several books at a time; reading twenty to thirty minutes a day from each book. Currently, I'm reading Dumpling Days by Grace Lin, Chosen by Denise Grover Swank, The Collective by Don Lee, and Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. I'd read more - books and minutes per day - but the realities of life don't prevent that from happening. Recently, though, I listened to an interview in which the author being questioned said that she doesn't read much when she's writing. She didn't say it exactly but she intimated that she's too involved in her writing that she just doesn't think about reading and she doesn't want to be influenced by what she might be reading.

I've often felt that way, too, but I don't think I could stop reading when I'm writing. And, in which stage of writing would I not be reading? The two - reading and writing - just belong together. Every writer is unique in how he or she approaches the books he or she is writing. Some of us outline while others don't. Of those of us who do, the way we do it differs greatly.

My work-in-progress is a YA, Asian-American fantasy series. As I worked on the first draft of the first book, I read Catching Fire and Insurgent, among other books. I'd read The Hunger Games and Divergent and I already wanted to find out what happens in each series so I was going to read Catching Fire and Insurgent, anyway, but I figured reading them as I was writing the first draft of Sage Of Heaven would help put me into a YA mindset. But, did they just put me into a YA mindset or was I influenced by them? I already had an idea of where the second and following books were going in Sage but I made a drastic decision as I came closer to finishing my draft. The change - switching the series' protagonist from one of the male characters to one of the female characters - makes the story more complex and interesting (for reasons other than the gender change) but, how much, subconsciously, was I influenced to do that because the protags in Catching Fire and Insurgent are girls?

In the last two years of writing Back Kicks And Broken Promises (which took almost ten years to write), I'd met, was taking workshops led by and read books by Matt de le Peña. Taking a pass at some of the passages in my debut novel, and at the risk of sound self-congratulatory, I think there are some parts that have a similar flow and tone as some of Matt's books. If you read Back Kicks and Matt's books - Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here - the subject matter is similarly themed. I was drawn to Matt's books for two reasons: he was the instructor of the first fiction class I took so I wanted to see if I'd like his work AND his books, with a male protagonist who's trying to sort out his place in this world, validated my own. Matt's stories come to us through a Mexican-American/Latino eye while mine are through an Asian-American lens.

I suspect the author who was interviewed in the podcast avoids reading other novels while writing either during the first draft/creation stage of her novels or until she submits a completed manuscript to her editor, agent or publisher. At that point, the work is out of her hands (although is a book, even after being published, ever out of a writer's head?) so she may have the time and intellectual and emotional freedom to sink into someone else's piece of fiction.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm reading Inheritance, the concluding volume in Christopher Paolini's series that started with Eragon. I bought it in 2011, when it came out, but at 800-plus pages, for me, it's an exercise in perseverance to finish it. I want to know how the series concludes so I will finish it but I'm extra motivated to finish it now because it's a fantasy story with dragons and wizards and Sage Of Heaven is also a fantasy story. The vehicles through which their stories are told are very different but they're in the same genre so Inheritance, while hopefully being entertaining, may offer me some insight into fantasy writing.

So, what is best? Or, is this another one of those things that's really different for every writer; one way working for some, another way working for others, and neither working for the rest? Should we, writers, read while we're creating and, if so, should we read in the genre of what we're writing in or a different one?

New Adult Fiction

New adult fiction.

I came across this term a couple of hours ago, when I was reading the latest issue of Publishers Weekly (PW) on my flight from New York to Hong Kong. There was a short piece in it that introduces the term - the genre - and explains it as fiction for books that are, basically, older than YA (young adult) and younger than adult/contemporary/mainstream/literary fiction. The contents of NA (somehow I don't see the abbreviation NA catching on, like the abbreviation YA, because of the other kind of NA, N/A. I don't fancy any author wanting his or her work to be mistaken for being N/A when it is NA.) are usually centered around characters who are older teens and younger twenties who are navigating what it means to be a (new) adult. It's coming-of-age, another genre that instantly makes me think of Catcher in the Rye and the movie Stand By Me, for an older set. Coming-of-age, typically, as far as I've always known it to be, was about the preteen referred to as 'tween' in the current century) through adolescent years and center around how the protagonist navigates the mental, emotional and social changes that adolescence brings.

The term 'new adult fiction' came about in the early 2000s when a contest was held within the walls of a publisher on how to describe a particular book it's staff was working on. It hasn't really come into vogue (yet) but with its unveiling in this week's PW I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it stakes its claim in literary lexicon. NA fiction is also geared towards those YA readers who are getting and have gotten older. With this approach, I suspect some authors may expand on the types of stories they tell to keep their audience. I don't know if this necessarily good or particularly bad but it could lead to stories just being produced no maintain a fan base and not written because the author HAS to tell the story.

Personally, I like this new genre. Well, the genre, as far as the kind of books that would fall into it, isn't new. NA books have been written for decades. The identification though for books being referred to as such is new. Really, readers will like stories that entertain and move them so it doesn't really matter what you call them. I love Legend by Marie Lu, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, and the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, to name a few, and these are regarded as YA/children's books. I loved them today, at 43, as I did when I originally read them when I was a tween. (Legend, of course, I only read as a 43 year old because it only came out last year but I love it, all the same.)

I like the term, though, from a marketing and publicity viewpoint. When asked about my book, Back Kicks And Broken, I describe it as 'older YA;' something that's appropriate for 17+. I feel it's NA because of the intimate scenes and not because of the martial arts action or the adult material that pertains to issues surrounding the protagonist and his parents. The martial arts scenes are action but they're not violent and, from personal experience, I know of eleven year olds and younger who have been faced to deal with - and handle very maturely - their parents' divorce, extended families with parents' new boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses. Good or bad, it's the world we live in in 2012.

Another reason I like about the term 'new adult fiction' is that those are the kinds of stories I'm writing. I've described my work-in-progress, Sage of Heaven, as YA but when I finished the first draft I felt that what I'd written is 'older YA' yet again. I can, and might, change it to more conventional YA yet but the story naturally lends itself to older YA, aka new adult fiction. This new genre gives writers like me a firmer place to belong as I slowly make my way into the world of writing and publishing. And that, in and of itself, makes me hopeful that I might actually make it. Good writing and storytelling will always win readers regardless of what category a book falls under and who the writer is but it never hurts having to place to call home.