(First of all, just a small reminder that Amazon still has the paperback version of Shards on sale for 20% off. If you need a present for someone who likes urban fantasy, please consider picking it up.)
(Also, I don’t understand Amazon’s pricing scheme. They change the price by a few cents every other day. Sometimes up, sometimes down. Whatever. I’m an author, not someone who understands complex economic algorithms.)
Guys, I have gotten almost nothing done in the last few days, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve been re-reading my high fantasy trilogy in an attempt to get ready to finish the first draft of the third book, and I have been sucked in. I was just going to read the first book, but instead I have pushed through all the way to what I have of the third, to the determent of many other things I am supposed to be doing. (Like paid work. And doing the laundry. To say nothing of the fact that I typically blog on Thursdays, not Fridays.)
(Man, I should really do the laundry.)
Occasionally I do actually have to do other things, and so I was wondering why I’ve been so engrossed in the whole thing. (Well, except for the beginning of the first book, which needs some serious pacing help.) I like to think that I’m pretty good at this whole writing thing, but I’m not under any delusions of being J.K. Rowling or Orson Scott Card or whomever is your favorite speculative fiction writer.
And I remembered that I’d gone into Shards a little over a month ago to check something and had ended up reading the whole thing again (again to the determent to anything useful).
So why was I getting so sucked into my own work?
And, with a little thought, it was obvious. People become writers for many reasons, but one of the most common is that the story a writer wants to read doesn’t exist, so they have to do it themselves. And most writers, the ones who really love what they’re doing, write stories that appeal directly to them. People write the stories they want to read.
So it follows that the stories I write, on some level, fulfill what I want. So, of course, they’re going to appeal to me, and I’m going to enjoy reading them. And, especially when it’s a story I haven’t touched in a while, it’s fun to go back through and read it like I’m reading it for the first time.
Whether they appeal quite as much to someone else, well, that’s something else completely.
Well, other writers, do you find yourself getting sucked into your own work? And everybody–readers and writers alike–what was the last book you literally could not put down?
