How Reading Affects Writing

In the secret space of dreams, where I dreaming lay amazed.
When the secrets all are told, and the petals all unfold.
Attics of My Life – Grateful Dead

As a writer, I dip into my memories, scrounging around for bits and pieces to create my Frankenstein stories – not literally mind you, just that they’re stories of assembled parts that alone have little value. Before I started writing, I usually considered my memory comprised of things I did or stuff that happened to me, around me or to someone I know.

After writing intensively lo these past eight months, it is clear that my memory also consists of other people’s memories that they’ve injected into their work. Unapologetic, I delve into the trunks and boxes filled with odds and ends from movies I’ve watched and stories I’ve read. Without fail, the book I happen to be reading, the blog posts I’ve read that day, or the web articles I skim creep into my writing.

It usually happens in three ways:

1. I find something that strikes a chord with the story I’m writing at the time, whether it be hard research (a cool bit of esoterica that is germane to the story), emotion (yeah, I need to draw that out more in my character), or concept (I like an idea that I want to include, but not in the way it’s presented in what I’m reading).
2. I read something that either inspires a new approach or dooms a current one (I find a bit of inspiration from an interview that inspires me to spread my wings a bit and try something I wouldn’t normally do OR I read something that is similar to what I’m working on realize I don’t want to replicate it).
3. Something I’m reading evokes a certain feel or flavor that I want to convey in my work, but brings with it trappings I wasn’t prepared to get into (e.g., an ancient monastic setting and the workings of said monastic setting).

At Joanna Penn’s blog, The Creative Penn, a recent post was titled “Why Do Great Writer’s Steal?” She goes on to offer ways a writer experiencing a block can use material to help them jump start their writing. In the beginning of the post she quotes T.S. Eliot:

“Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal.” T.S.Eliot

I take that to mean that great writers take something from someone else and make it their own so that it bears little resemblance to the original thing. I hope that’s what it means, because I can’t help but do it. I’m not saying I’m great, but I’m happy to take a concept and bend, twist, paint, burn, smash, or whatever I have to do to it to get it to the point that it becomes I’m searching for.