Reading AND Writing

I was just thinking that when we read novels and certain phrases may pop up in our novel. They may just pop up...I have a writer friend of mine who is a great fan of Twilight. Now, I am not a Twilight hater. But neither am I a fan. Every work of art is in fact a work of art and I feel that lots of haters are jealous of Stephanie's success (or author authors in other cases). This isn't the topic of today's post. So when reading his manuscript I stumbled upon a few small sentences and description that were from the Twilight book (I haven’t read it fully, but they were from certain parts I’ve skimmed). Yikes. How much do you read when you write and has your "mind" ever copied great sentences that you loved?


For me, I was never much of a reader and that may be surprising being that I began to write. I read, yes...But I read very little. Maybe just even a few books a year and those were the books that I got as gifts. I couldn't NOT read them. Sometimes I think that maybe my writing would have improved faster if I read more. Maybe. But at the same time, I began writing because I couldn’t find the novel I wanted. I couldn't find the story I was inclined to find, thus, why not write it down? Well, I did. Now that I have my story down, I find that I didn't plagiarize or steal because I simply didn't know much other works...

And this was the time to begin reading other works. To see what they did right and what I did wrong. To see what needs to be fixed. To understand the rules. I haven't read much novels yet in the fantasy genre, but I've picked up a couple of best sellers last year...See, I am a TOTAL bookworm. I read three books in 2010. WOW!!! I personally believe that it really depends on each and every individual, just like a critique. If you give the same writing to 5 people their critiques will be so different you will go hazy just looking at them. One person liked that part, the other said its terrible, remove. What I can say is that from my own experience you have to base your trust upon yourself, and knowledge. Yes, that is the key. Let me know what you think.