Tuesday Books for Writers!

When I was in college, a lot of my writing classes had a similar format. Eccentric writing Professor passes out a photo-copied handout of an excerpt of a published novel or short story. Students pass copies around the room. 15-20 minutes of silence ensues for your reading pleasure. Afterwards, it's discussed. A writing exercise is posed to the class pertaining to the piece. The class proceeds, in silence, to write for 15-20 minutes. Afterwards, the experience is discussed.

We read to become better writers. In the hopes that the more you read...well...you get the picture. So as logic might have it, the more we write, the better we must read. (Here's hoping!) We pick up on things. We read, not only because we love stories, but because we're interested in craft. How did they do what they did? Why is it effective? We become active readers.

It is my goal to become a more active reader. I read many books and I'm in awe of them. But I often can't articulate why. So, what better way to do it then to post it on this darn here blog?

Every Tuesday I hope to tell you what I'm reading and what I'm learning from it. Some Tuesdays I might forget. Some Tuesdays I might be pulling my hair out at work and will not feel like telling you a darn thing. ;-) But most Tuesdays, I'll try my hardest to articulate what's good about what I'm reading and try and figure out why on earth it's good. No matter what it is. Whether it's Chick Lit or Tolstoy I'm going to try.

Maybe you'll find it to be a good resource. Maybe you'll say: Melissa, seriously, enough with trying to figure out why Twilight is a resource for writers, let me get back to my 3rd reading of Grapes of Wrath.

So here's to the new series: Tuesday Books for Writers! I figure an exclamation mark really kicks things up a notch! (Ask me offline about my day job some time!)

Because it took me long enough to explain myself, I have nothing more to say today. So I'll link to a previous blog about Trusting a Narrator which is something I learned from Elijah of Buxton.
I hope you'll engage in a dialogue about the things you're learning from your reading too :-)