Fueling the Fire by Janet Jones
It’s February in Ohio, so I am hibernating. I open the door only to throw a dog biscuit out on the back deck to coax my miniature schnauzer to put his naked little paws in the icy snow. He comes back to the door looking like a tiny abominable snowman with blinking brown eyes. He can barely move his short little legs. The snow sticks to his long fur like Velcro. He is 12 inches high and has to navigate through the deep snow by a series of hops like a bunny rabbit. He looks at me with accusation in his eyes as I let him back into the warm house.
Sorry Buffet. I know when you were a puppy I used to shovel out paths for you in the backyard, but well…come on… you knew that wasn’t going to last. What a good dog you are. Come over by the fire.
As I put another log on the blazing fire, intending to go back to the computer to work, I spy the book I’ve been reading. I grab it and settle into my fireside recliner and tell myself I will read just one chapter.
Three chapters later, I snap the book shut and grab a pen and a sheet of paper from the printer and furiously write out plot notes for a manuscript. I need to get it down before I forget.
Stephen King says:
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.”
Just like fueling the fire with another log, if you want to write fiction, you need to read fiction – voraciously, and constantly. As soon as I finish a novel, I pick up another one to read. Keeping myself in “story mode” seems to be as essential to plotting ideas as adding logs to the fire to keep the room warm.
Well, warm is relative. My husband accuses me of creating a sweltering summer downstairs when I use the fireplace. He says if I was in hell—I would ask the devil to please turn up the heat. Says the guy who wears only short sleeve shirts winter or summer. That’s just wrong. I suggest a solution if he is sweltering—he can go out in the backyard and shovel paths in the snow for Buffett.
A fiction writer who doesn’t read fiction is like a musician who doesn’t listen to music.
To develop a rhythm and “ear” for music it takes hours of listening and practicing the style of music you are passionate about. Studying the classics may help your fingering technique but if you want to be a Jazz musician, listen to Jazz music.
Speaking of classics, William Faulkner said:
“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”
Reading fiction is not only essential for writing good fiction…it’s a well-known stress reliever. According to a 2015 article by Ceridwen Dovey in the New Yorker magazine, reading can ease depression and aid sleep by putting our brains into a trance-like state, similar to meditation, which lowers blood pressure and induces relaxation. With the exception of a Stephen King horror novel, probably.
But even thrillers and horror novels create a sense of empathy within us. And there is a reason that REM sleep—the time in which we are dreaming—is the deepest and most restful part of our nightly sleep. Dreaming is essentially making up stories in our heads, which can help our brains process random thoughts.
According to author Jeanette Winterson:
“Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”
And since reality for me in February is a bitter cold winter… I’ll eagerly take the medicine of reading a good book.
Shh… I’m reading. See you in the spring.
Love your story> Did not read it till I returned home from Florida
I did not have a computer in Florida. Waiting for you two go finsh that Novel, so I can read it..
Love Mom