Hi Everyone,
I am very happy to announce that I was asked to be a part of the Natalie Hart book tour. Natalie wrote a fantastic guest piece that I think all my headers will love. Make sure to also check out Natalie’s social media, website, and her new book Pieces of Me (releasing on 10/1).
So without further ado…
Being a Reading Writer
I genuinely believe that the most effective thing an author can do to improve his or her writing, other than living a full and varied life, is read. Read more. Read broadly. Read narrowly. Read popular titles and read obscure manuscripts. Read one book and then another and then another after that. The journey of writing my debut novel Pieces of Me was a journey of reading as much as it was writing.
I do know, however, that some authors don’t read at all during the writing process. Although I cannot imagine a writing life of which reading is not a part, working on my second book has caused me to pause and reconsider exactly how I read during writing Pieces of Me. It was a habit that evolved as my writing did.
My most voracious reading occurred in my idea generating phase. While the idea for Pieces of Me was in gestation, I read anything and everything. I filled my head with as many different voices, styles and genres as I could. At the end of each book I asked myself not just whether or not I had enjoyed it, but what specifically I did or didn’t enjoy and why. It was a far more engaged and active kind of reading than when I read simply to relax and lose myself in a story. Books that stand out for me from during this period, which I found particularly compelling and emotionally engaging, were Khaled Hosseini’s A Hundred Splendid Suns and Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. In fact, the character of Emma’s father in the book was inspired by Kalanithi.
Eventually the idea for Pieces of Me came together and I spent a lot of time jotting down ideas and writing chapters completely out of sequence, just to experiment. During that period I read all the war fiction I could – both contemporary fiction from Iraq and Afghanistan, and older works. I asked myself the same questions I asked myself before. What is it in the writing that resonates with me and why? These were particularly poignant questions when reading about such raw, sensitive subjects. The many, many war books subsequently became the subject of my MA dissertation and I discovered a number of books that are now among my all-time favourites.
I know some writers who don’t want to read other books on the topics they are writing around. Some are worried of absorbing the contents of the books and recreating it in their own work. Others think they will be put off if they read something similar to their idea. Personally, after my war literature frenzy, I was both inspired and terrified.
From all of this reading, I ended up with two key texts that I turned to whenever I was struggling with the writing process. Each text came to represent a part of protagonist Emma’s identity. Tim O’Brien’s story collection The Things They Carried, and in particular the piece ‘How to tell a good war story’ helped me tap into the side of Emma that existed in Iraq. Jehanne Dubrow’s stunning poetry collection Stateside unfailingly helped me connect with Emma in Colorado. They were a perfect combination and the nature of short stories and poetry complimented the theme of fragmentation in Pieces of Me perfectly.
Other than that, I read completely off topic. I read beautiful books with beautiful words that I believe made me a better writer just from absorbing them. Nickolas Butler’s Shotgun Lovesongs was certainly one that I read more than once!
Ultimately, the only time I didn’t read while writing was during particularly intensive periods of the editing process. I felt like I was very carefully holding together hundreds of carefully woven strings and that to take my attention away from them to focus on another writer’s voice would cause me to drop all of them.
And what did I do to celebrate the completion of the manuscript? I went back to reading anything and everything until the idea for my next book started to form!
About the Author
Natalie Hart is a writer, strategic communications consultant and qualitative researcher. Her first novel Pieces of Me is being published by Legend Press on October 1, 2019. It was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. Natalie specializes in conflict and post-conflict environments. She has worked extensively across the Middle East and North Africa, including three years in Iraq. Natalie has a BA in Combined Middle Eastern Studies (Arabic and Spanish) from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University.
https://www.nataliehartauthor.com/
@NatalieGHart
So that’s all folks.
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Until next time dear readers.
-Jessica
I was sent this photo and guest post by Legend Press in exchange for participation in this blog tour.
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