Closet Shame: I'm a Writer, Not a Reader

One thing a lot of authors seem to peddle as advice is to read more and write more.  While the latter has become my obsession, I have to admit I'm a poor excuse for a reader.

That wasn't always the case.  I was a voracious reader into my mid twenties and I could drop titles/authors at you with ease.  I can't say exactly when reading became more of a chore or perhaps just lacked priority, but it's certainly nothing I am proud of.  I became somewhat incapable of just moving my eyes and imagining.  I became a slave to restlessness and couldn't have idle hands.

This made my love for video games take a bigger showing in my life.  I could enjoy my epic fantasies with the added benefit of voices, music, and visual masterpieces.  In that way, drawing came back into my life.  I've already posted about health problems throwing a wrench in the works and that reset a lot of what I thought I was as well as restoring some parts of me I thought were long gone.

I became a crafter and writing is just as much a craft as drawing and crocheting with their finer hand demands.  I do read, and a lot, but I lack the desire to devour the novels that I so love to write because my hands are overpowering assholes in the bid for my attention.  

I often do read the stories my closest friends write and I do enjoy them.  Sometimes they humor my crippling inattention and make short easy-to-devour chapters for this underachiever.  I enjoy critiquing if I can give the work my attention.  I am diplomatic even when the effort is frustrating.  It's not impossible, but it's rare and a labor of love.

I will never be able to answer how many books I've read in a year or even who wrote them.  Between my own ambitious work in illustrating and writing, I am lucky to be able to do more than edit, critique or poke in a quick blog or post on social media.  I don't have a TBR list and I have often not read a damn thing in my favorite genres over the last ten years.  I have no lack of ideas and I voraciously read articles on improving myself in the market and as a writer, but I am a lapsed reader.  I love my author and writer friends but as long as I'm charging on ambition, I'm afraid their work will be the closest I come to a TBR, because even if I can't get to reading it, I still sure as hell want to support their dreams, either with encouragement or finding a damn spot for their book in this game of Tetris (or maybe Jenga) I'm living in.

I would love to join the ranks of voracious readers one day.  Don't think it is through any lack of interest or idleness on my part. I put this dream of writing off too long.  Granted, I had always thought it would be comic books, I've found a compromise there as well.  I still might do comic books a few years from now.  My illustrations are improving in quality and confidence.  I'd like to collaborate with friends like Joe and Matt sooner rather than later, but they know I'm swamped with this shiny new courage and I'm sure they'll appreciate our collaborative effort more for the knowledge I'm building on my solo journey.

So yes, my name is Krista and I'm the unconventional author.  I wield little bits of all the things writers are told not to do, but I promise you, I'm not just flinging yogurt and I cast lines carefully.  I'm going to Paul Bunyan the shit out of my stories but I will write honestly with a shameful lack of reading novels in my repertoire.  Trust me, gaming is no slouch in the writing department so you'll have to trust that a pleb like me knows how to get things done.  Or don't. It really won't slow me down and for you and me both?  Plenty of fish in the sea.  Ships are meant to pass, not collide.  All those lovely marine metaphors.

Did you cringe? I kind of hope so. I do so try...