From Reader to Writer
Last week, I reached my 50th post for my blog. This felt like a rather big milestone to be to have kept on writing that much but after thinking about it I realized that the 50 articles posted online had been reached a few weeks ago in reality (if we count the articles posted here and not yet on my blog).
Still, this made me think about how my relationship with texts has evolved in recent months.
While my mother was always very strict when it comes to mistakes in writing (this has rubbed off on me and for this reason, mistakes irritate me to the highest point) nobody in my family has ever really written anything to be shared with others.
My mother however reads pretty much 4 or 5 books in a bad week and a whole lot more on a good one. I used to be an avid reader myself but video games got me far from it for a while.
A few months ago, I probably would have complained about the amount of knowledge I could have amassed if I had kept reading. But now I realize that it may have actually served me well to stop reading for a while.
Having not read regularly (apart from articles online), allowed me to forget styles, to forget the kind of texts that I enjoyed and thus to start again without any prejudice reading new materials, new texts that I probably would have ignored otherwise.
A new start.
Considering the stereotypes I had heard about writing, the fact that people around me don’t read that much (apart from my mom) and the (wrongly supposed) lack of support I’d get, I really needed to start anew.
I am sure it is obvious to any writer that writing is a natural evolution from reading. Any good writer gets inspired by the authors read and liked, adapts his writing little by little to create his own style as a combination of all that has been read and aligns with his beliefs/personality.
For this reason, not having read for a while could have been a mistake as a new writer but in the end, I believe this is serving me well. This has allowed me to not have any fixed preconceptions and learn by doing.
Furthermore, as I have started reading more and more again, this allows me to see the text with an extra eye: “the writer’s eye”. As a writer in his beginning stages, I am trying to absorb all the new knowledge and skills. This means that I not only read for the content but also looking at the form, in which voice the text is written, etc.
Obviously, before this actually shows in my own writing, I will need to read and write a lot more, but I am not in a hurry and am enjoying the process of writing so if it needs 6 months or even a year, I’ll take that time and continue practicing.
I am far from being a “real, full-fledged” writer, but I’ll keep on improving without fault and I will keep on sharing this adventure, just like any girl on diet would do on Instagram: relentlessly.
