I was at the Southern California Writer’s Conference last weekend and as always came back with some valuable ideas and connections.
At author Bob Yehling’s panel on Cross-Genre Writing, Yehling urged listeners to keep a stack of four to five books around and read them at the same time to improve the reader’s ability to use figurative language. Apparently the right/left brain connections built by this method help generate metaphors, similes and analogies.
Presently I’m reading Eight Lives Down: The Most Dangerous Job in the World in the Most Dangerous Place in the World, by Chris Hunter; The Land of Nod by Mark A. Clements, The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, and re-reading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I’ve been reading more than one book at a time for a while now, motivated by a desire to cram as much into my time as possible. I’ve noticed that figurative language has been coming to me more easily but assumed it was just due to practice. But perhaps Yehling is onto something here, and it’s my daily cross-reading instead. Has anyone else been doing this and gotten similar, or different, results?
Lacey Gordon
/ February 19, 2010Wow didn’t think of reading multiple books helping like that. Great info! And like you, I am right now reading 5 books
Doug Lathrop
/ February 20, 2010Interesting. I’ve always been more of a serial reader — finishing one book before starting another, or if a book loses its hold on me part of the way through, setting it down and not going back to it for a long time, if ever — but I’ll give multiple reading a try. And when you’re done with Eight Lives Down, can I borrow it? It sounds like just the sort of stuff I’m perusing for research right now.
Administrator
/ February 20, 2010Doug, I would love to loan you Eight Lives Down but it’s on my Kindle so I can’t. That’s one of the reasons that e-books that can’t be loaned shouldn’t be the same price as paper books – they don’t have the same functionality. Great book though – well written and fast paced.
Melanie Young
/ February 20, 2010Janet, first – the site looks awesome! Excellent content, woman!
Second, I’ve always thought my multiple-books-at-once reading habit was due to my schizophrenic nature vs. any subconscious language seeking, but it’s nice to hear a writerly justification of it! Can’t tell you that it’s necessarily aided my figurative language ability, which remains fairly poor, but I do know that it enriches my life — exploring the realms of the real and unreal, picking up humor one afternoon and historic non-fiction in the eve, etc.
I believe what this habit might actually be doing for me is less direct. In thinking about multiple spheres on a daily basis, I’m often struck by the juxtapositions of different subcultures, worlds and speech patterns. I do find myself experimenting with disparate characters in my fiction, mostly as a source of humor of course, since that’s what I write…but still. Food for thought.
Hope this new path inspires similes as original and brave as the Icelandic nudist luge squad. (See? Told you I wasn’t that good at them…
.)