Reading and Writing – Like Love and Marriage?

It’s been a long time since I have had the luxury of picking up a book, if they still make those. I know it’s all about e-readers now, but I haven’t went there yet. I have always liked the touch of a book, and when they started putting coffee shops in book stores, they became a favorite meeting place for my daughter and me. While I do not really drink coffee, the smell of books and coffee is one of the best in the world. Alas, I haven’t been in one of those in years either.

Ironically, writing professionally is about a lot of research, reading, and processing all that information in a short amount of time. But, it also leaves little or no time for reading for pleasure, depending on the individual sacrifices you have to make in regards to workload and paying bills.

In some ways personal reading can inhibit writing, especially if you have to write informational content and technical pieces. My favorite reading genre was always Fantasy and Science Fiction, and I have adopted long words and flowery speech as my most comfortable expressive style – if I were left to my own devices and had choices for writing.

However, in the world of Panda and SEO this does not work (hence my personal blogs). It’s no wonder it’s called the Age of Information, people want it and they want it now.

Then there are those publishers who want a conversational style. Well, the people I tend to talk to in my personal life are not your general audience either, so I have problems sometimes meeting those guidelines. It’s like writing for Two-and-a-half Men as opposed to the Big Bang Theory. Or, you have to dumb it down to sixth grade level. Unfortunately, the sixth grade education I received was ahead of what generally counts as sixth grade in the publishing world.

Perhaps it’s a good thing I don’t have time to read anymore.