Reading and Writing

Reading and Writing

I feel I should add and arithmetic! But no, I am just writing about my reading and writing habits. I believe I may have mentioned them before, so if I am repeating myself, I apologise.

I know I have told you that I cannot read when I am writing, nor write when I am reading. However, this statement needs a bit of explanation, as it is not entirely true.

The genre that I write in is murder mystery, and my favourite genre for reading is also murder mystery, so it is true that when I am writing, generally between January and June I cannot read any murder mystery books. Nonetheless, I do read, but from a different genre than that in which I write. I do like reading the classics and a few months ago I finished Don Quixote, which I had started reading about three years ago, before our intended holiday to Castilla La Mancha and Quixote windmill country, which was delayed for a year due to my waiting for a hip operation. However, I never did finish it before we went in 2024, but finished it recently, having thoroughly enjoyed it.

I find that classic books sometimes are exceptionally long, but they also lend themselves to reading slowly over time. Currently, as I am writing book 4 in the Morgan Morales Murder Mystery series, I have picked up another classic, this time one I had read when younger, and fancied reading again, the classic Dostoyevsky’s Russian tale of War and Peace. This again is a long book, with many short chapters. It amused me recently when I asked Google how many chapters War and Peace had. The answer was 361 chapters, broken into 15 parts, and spread over 4 books, with 2 epilogues. One comment even said that the book lent itself to reading one chapter per day, taking nearly a year to complete. I don´t know when I restarted reading War and Peace, I believe it was before I started Don Quixote, but I found it easy to pick up again, though I do sometimes forget who the minor characters are and the part they play in the plot. Nonetheless, I read more than one chapter at a time. Hopefully, I shall finish it this year.

So, the other side of the coin is my writing, which dictates what genre I read, and also impacts on my daily life. Whilst writing, I am often thinking about the way the plot is developing, and which direction it will take. Sometimes this can make me a little absent minded, and my replies to a question that John gives me will make him frown and ask me to repeat, because I am more concentrated on what I am thinking and less on what I reply to John! Perhaps that was what the problem for the stereotypical absent-minded professor. So, I have to mentally shake myself and devote my attention entirely to the here and now, not my ethereal world that exists in my head, and, eventually, on the written page.

The other thing that I have to mention is that reading has changed a lot over the past years. We do not really have room for a bookcase here in our Spanish home so many of my books are e-books, that I read on my tablet. Though I do indulge in buying a few second-hand ones in local charity shops, and now and again, if there is a special book I wish to buy, I shall order it online.

So, now for my writing habits. I write the most on a Friday and Saturday morning as John goes to work earlier those days, at 11am. Our weekend is Sunday and Monday and usually I do not write at all on those days. John´s other working days Tuesday to Thursday, he leaves at 1.30pm, and if I start to write, it will not be for long, as I get hungry and need to stop for lunch, and once I stop, I do not start again. So generally, I write about 3,000 words over Friday and Saturday, and perhaps 500 words on the other days, though sometimes I do not write at all, but I may be doing some research, and that is just as important.

Currently I am speeding towards the end of the book and will definitely have it finished next week or the week after, I believe. Then its editing and re-writing and checking, before, finally publishing in September.