Can you just READ?

[impressive]

I can't do it anymore. Writing has ruined the escapist joy I used to get from reading. Oh, I might get absorbed in a passage or a chapter, but then something -- some technique or turn of phrase or style -- will jar me from the story. I now read with a writer's eye, and I really wish I could turn it off at times. *sigh*

 

[cloudy]

It depends. (good answer, huh?)

I can get so absobed in a good story that I lose all track of time and my surroundings. BUT - sometimes, like you, I have the curse of the writer's eye, and can get jarred back to reality a lot quicker than I used to.

Sucks, don't it?

 

[rgraham666]

Oh yes. I still read.

Not as much as I used to, but that's more a matter of poverty than perspective.

My biggest problem is that I've read so much, it's hard to find something new. Since my favourite fiction is SF, that's an especially bad problem for me. I'll start something and I'll go, "I've read this before, in 1973."

 

[Belegon]

I still am a reading addict in general, but I do sometimes get jolted out now. I almost never read on Lit anymore unless it is something from someone I know. I am very likely to get "jolted out" here. I limit myself to a few authors that I know are good enough to maintain the illusion or to friends who I will be able to use that I was jarred out if I am asked.

 

[Extreme Bohunk]

I found if I'm aware of 'reading' something, it's just not well written.
If I'm able to go with the flow of the story, I'm happy.

I do a lot of video/audio, and get irked when the direction/production is so heavy handed that I'm being made aware I'm watching a movie (or listening to a song), I become very critical. If the director/ producer insists of putting a 'thumbprint' on their work, then I feel obliged to look harder at the rest. The hardest thing to do is convey all the reader/viewer/listener needs, and have the 'production' remain transparent.

 

[impressive]

I found if I'm aware of 'reading' something, it's just not well written.
If I'm able to go with the flow of the story, I'm happy.

That's just it! Nothing ... and I mean NOTHING ... has been able to keep me fully absorbed in the story since I became aware of various writing styles/techniques. There is always at least one passage (usually more) that makes me aware of the writing. Occasionally, it'll be because it's very well executed. More often, though, it's one of those "red flag" moments (like the example I posted on the Critique Dan Brown thread).

I'm afraid to re-read some of the books that I thoroughly enjoyed years ago because I just know the bloom will be stripped from the rose. So, I'll keep my fond memories and not allow them to be marred by reality.

 

[Extreme Bohunk]

That's just it! Nothing ... and I mean NOTHING ... has been able to keep me fully absorbed in the story since I became aware of various writing styles/techniques. There is always at least one passage (usually more) that makes me aware of the writing. Occasionally, it'll be because it's very well executed. More often, though, it's one of those "red flag" moments (like the example I posted on the Critique Dan Brown thread).

I'm afraid to re-read some of the books that I thoroughly enjoyed years ago because I just know the bloom will be stripped from the rose. So, I'll keep my fond memories and not allow them to be marred by reality.

Very frustrating.

I went through the same thing with music for a long time. I found myself dissecting the songs, putting them under an audio microscope to the point of not even hearing the song.
I finally quit listening to it. I read an interview with Frank Zappa once who said he never listened to other people's music because it interfered w/ his own creativity. I suscribed to that theory for a number of years. Just recently, I've been able to just enjoy the songs again.

 

[Guest]

It's VERY hard for me to read anything anymore. It takes an outstanding writer to get my interest and keep it for an entire book. I was recently excited to find out on of Heinleins lost manuscripts is being published for the first time. And I recently got around to Dan Brown. But lately I read maybe two or three books a year.

 

[McKenna]

Hey Imp,

I do know what you mean about reading with a writer's eye. It has kept me from reading stuff I've enjoyed in the past, but I found at least one way to circumvent it --Try reading a classic. Emerson, Thoreau, or even more modern stuff like Hemingway.

For me, it was having to concentrate on more than just the words that eventually pulled my mind from "critique" mode. I had to break out of a genre I regularly read and challenge myself. If the classics don't work, try something else you don't regularly read. Even the King James version of the Bible. There's some real poetry in there!

Or maybe it's just time to take a break from reading altogether. Try some crosswords or word puzzles. Anything to keep your mind busy but still focused a bit on words and writing.

Every couple of years I'll hit a "dry spell" in my reading. I can't pick up a book without thinking it's the smarmiest piece of crap I've ever read. (Harsh, I know.) I will feel like there are no good writers left in the world ...but do I give up searching? Nope. I've got to have something to read. It's this inner craving that is never satisfied. I might put off the search for a few months, then stumble across an author I can actually enjoy and wind up buying and reading all her/his books.

Hang in there, you'll figure out what to do.

-McK

 

[English Lady]

You should try becoming a review writer *chuckles* I review allsorts for 2 consumer review sites, I write in depth reviews and very often i review books. Anyway, now when I read anything I review it as I go. I cna still get lost in a book, but I find it happens less and less.

I have read 3 or 4 books of late and afterwards thought "What a good idea, I wish it had been written better." but generally it is plot and characters that I find lacking. A good book still keeps me hooked though!

 

[TheEarl]

I appear to be a literary slut. I love reading and I can't stop. Read everything in my bookcase at least 7 times. Unless the book has major bad points, then I can easily turn off the writer and just read.

Try some fluffy reading, like Janet Evanovich. I find reading her books is very evocative of the AH; I could quite easily buy Stephanie Plumm as an AH regular.

The Earl

 

[cloudy]

Try some fluffy reading, like Janet Evanovich. I find reading her books is very evocative of the AH; I could quite easily buy Stephanie Plumm as an AH regular.

I love Janet Evanovich! She's so fucking funny!

 

[Kassiana]

Yes. Nothing can keep me from reading. Nothing can keep me from picking up on spelling and grammar errors, either, in what I read. Those are what, most often, will turn me off reading 'Net stories. In books, they tend to be fewer and farther between. On the 'Net... ::shudders::

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Honestly?

When I read, I look mostly for something to get me off. Yes, I do notice certain phrases sometimes, but I seem to focus more on the negative ones, ie the ones that make you go "ouch! that's a cheap clichée!"

 

[sweetnpetite]

I can't do it anymore. Writing has ruined the escapist joy I used to get from reading. Oh, I might get absorbed in a passage or a chapter, but then something -- some technique or turn of phrase or style -- will jar me from the story. I now read with a writer's eye, and I really wish I could turn it off at times. *sigh*

I've always read that way. I guess I was just born to be a writer.

But lit had ruined me for erotic stories for a while. I realized that I was only reading them to *study* them and didn't get much enjoyment out of them. I had to make a conscious decision to give that up. I read for enjoyment, but I learn what I like and don't like, what works and what doesn't without trying so hard. The same way I originally learned.

 

[Guest]

I can't do it anymore. Writing has ruined the escapist joy I used to get from reading. Oh, I might get absorbed in a passage or a chapter, but then something -- some technique or turn of phrase or style -- will jar me from the story. I now read with a writer's eye, and I really wish I could turn it off at times. *sigh*

I am noticing this, too. Quite a bit more lately, as I've finally begun to write with a vengeance.

But my field is music. And that was spoiled for me a long time ago.

Pop music is easily dissected as most of it is complete crap. (There is excellent work out there, of course.) But I'll even mentally tear apart classical musical performances.

The worst thing for me? Attending weddings of friends and families where somebody (who really doesn't have a voice) sings. Instrumentalists don't seem to do that unless they are truly skilled. Why does everybody think they can sing?

At any rate, since I am musical, and people know this, they always come up to me after someone has well and truly butchered a cornball arrangement of "Where is Love?" They say something along the lines of, Wasn't that wonderful? and Oh, doesn't she have a lovely voice? and She's the sister of the bride, you know. and She sang all the way through high school. and Wasn't that song so beautiful? And so on.

I always manage a smile and murmur appreciative remarks, though I am gritting my teeth and mentally apologizing to my voice teachers.

It's wonderful they wish to share for their family and be a part of the wedding, and everyone at the celebration seems to truly enjoy it.

It's just my own problem.

 

[AppleBiter]

I very much enjoy reading. But, lately, my reading time has been devoted to textbooks and other required reading so that, now, when I have time to read for fun . . . I don't want to. *sigh* It is sad, but I know that once I'm done with school, I'll be into reading again, so I'm not too worried.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Try combining an interest in writing with study of literary theory and analysis. It's really hard to come to the text as a "virgin" again. I can willfully set it aside when I have a strong motivation - strangling, for instance, the gender/colonialist analytical screams when I read the Chronicles of Narnia, beause I still have my childhood love of them and I cling to it. But it's harder with new works I haven't seen. Still, the struggle helps; Lewis reminds me that whatever I think of the limitations of an author's perspective, s/he can still have very valuable things to say.

And there is a payoff as well. Once you know how hard it is to do those writerly things, and once you are more aware of the conscious choices in technique, structure, and wording, you appreciate the finest work in an entirely new way. The last time I read Pope's "An Essay on Criticism," I realized that he knew things at twenty one that I'm only really beginning to understand now. I laugh out loud and want to applaud Swift's brilliant and savage wit so beautifully phrased and absolutely impeccably timed in "A Modest Proposal." And when I read Seamus Deane's "Reading in the Dark," the experience of the sudden confluence of a dozen thematic streams late in the novel was absolutely explosive. I was stunned when the first motions of it began and I realized that he was drawing, amazingly and inexorably, every apparently disparate and seperate memory of his narrator's boyhood into a single moment of total revelation and catharsis. It was so remarkable to watch happen that I was literally exclaiming out loud - "Oh. He can't be. He can NOT be doing this. I can't believe he's doing this!"

One hell of a read.

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

 

[oggbashan]

A long time ago I started to take a degree course with the Open University. I was hoping to study Humanities to add to the geographical and management qualifications I already had.

After a few weeks I flunked myself. I couldn't face analysing literature that I loved and appreciated in such depth that it destroyed any joy I found in it. Poetry was the worst. I knew that classical poets worked hard to make the effect seem easy. I didn't want to lose the delight I had in seeing part of the world in a new way because I had read a poem.

I find it difficult to read other people's work on Literotica and suspend my disbelief and critical faculties. I can do it with other genres, but very rarely with erotica.

I can read the most banal SF and get involved in the Western style shoot-em-ups between the hero and the aliens, but on Literotica I seem to have a little voice saying 'Could it be written better?' 'Would that really happen?' Would he/she react like that?'

It is very frustrating and one of the reasons why I am reluctant to post comments on other people's stories. I am really afraid of being too demanding and hyper-critical.

Og

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

 

[CrazyyAngel]

I haven't written enough to see everything through a writers eye ... but I have read enough to recognize bad stories or poorly written ones.

For example ... I am an SF addict (Star Trek/Star Wars mostly) and have literally read hundreds of books in those two universes. What is most annoying to me is when writers write whole books where every character acts out of character. Just recently I read "The courtship of Princess Leia" again ... last time I read it about 10 years ago. The worst Star Wars novel I've ever read ... most of the dialogue made those "I hurt cause I love you ... No I love you more" lines in SW III: ROTS poetry on a shakespearian level. Sheesh ...

So after reading pretty much everything I can get my hands on for the past 20 years, my senses are much more fine tuned. Especially when the stories evolve around something I know so damn well ... like both the ST and SW universes.

 

[SeaCat]

LOLOL

I started to fall into this trap a while back. It took a little effort on my part to stop it so I could enjoy reading again. Some of the stories I read are truly trash, but can be enjoyed if you know they are trash. (Sometimes I want to read trash. Mindless reading I call it.) Hell I even enjoy erotica or porn. What the hell every author has something to say. Maybe they don't say it as well as others but they still have something to say.

Okay so maybe I'm not an author, maybe I'm just a teller of stories. Either way I like what I write and I still like to read.

Cat

 

[davidwatts]

I read very little these days but that doesn't stop me from buying books for some reason. I buy DVD's I don't watch, books I don't read, CD's I don't listen to and subscribe to magazines I never open. Help me.