To Read or Not to Read, That Is the Question

We're supposed to write about enjoyable reads this month. Considering the state of my writing, it is debatable whether I should read or not. Like the ads for Zoloft that will help fight depression, if I feel a sudden urge to off myself, I should stop taking it. So it is for reading.

What could I be reading that could cause such a disaster for my person? A fight for my very life? (ok, let's dial it back a bit and say, 'for my very fragile mental state'?)

A book on sentences.

Yup.

That's it. A book on sentences.

You see, a while back, I hit a bleak place in my writing. Nothing was jogging loose. I met up with a good writer and we had a bit of a coze and I came home fired up to write something spectacular. I did. However, it turned out that spectacular didn't exactly fit the rest of the writing in the book. DANG!

So, in a fit of pique, I decided to improve my writing. I plunged into a box of books in the bottom of a closet. I read a couple of romances written by others that I had kept for their excellence. Still excellent and as I studied them, I realized that my style of writing was so different that it wouldn't have mattered how excellent they were, they had little application for me except to make me green-eyed with jealousy. My ire went higher.

I got out the books, both one and two, of a college course called optimistically, "Writing Great Sentences". This course was purchased a handful of years ago. I had put in the VCR tape and began to watch it. I had become so confused that after a mere half hour I quit, put the tape and books away, and went for a coke--all knowing I was doomed to un-distinction and an ill ability to write great sentences. This time around I was set to preservere (that and I thought maybe, since I'd slept in a Holiday Inn Express* since then, that I might have a shot at understanding it better. Unfortunately, I no longer have a VCR player and found myself doomed to READ book one and two. I carried book one in my purse for when I had to wait in line for something....

Something came along and yes, there I had that darned book and yes, I took it out to read it, and yes, it was still gobbledegook and iskcensrd to me, but I kept soldiering on through incomprehensible paragraphs, through unknown twists in Gordian knots of words until....

My brain swelled up and popped.

Ok, it didn't really, but I thought it was going to.

And then I managed to understand a bit. And then a bit more. And then....

Well no more, but then I haven't read anymore. But the part I did get to said that writing that is being taught now, stripped down and direct is a form of more masculine speak. Hard boiled detective novels used to use it almost exclusively. Sentences that turn and twist a bit are more interesting. Wahooo! All might not be lost for me.

Here's an example: The man drove with care, sunglasses shading his eyes, wind from an open window playing with his hair, a thirty-eight revolver on the seat beside him, a grim smile on his face, and a body in the trunk.

Wow!

Now that is a sentence that catches your attention.

I'm a little way into book one now and it is not easy, but I just keep reading in hopes that another diamond will be discovered. I can't stop, as this book is like quicksand, and I'm afraid that if I try to concentrate on understanding each page before I go on that I shall sink like a struggling deer in quicksand. However, as I read along, some of it makes sense. But more than that, I can feel my writerly juices flowing a little less sluggishly. Thinking. Thinking of places that I could use a really good sentence or two. Hmmm.....

* for those of you who don't watch that much TV, there is a commercial that implies if you stay in a Holiday Inn Express you can do almost anything--like brain surgery.