What I’m reading, and why

Russell Davis, a prolific writer and former editor of Five Star, teaches classes on how to write faster. He says that writers need to trust their fingers, and realize their fingers know more than their heads. He said writers—voracious readers that most of us are—already know how to plot a book; we have hundreds of plots in our minds already. I like the idea of letting our subconscious (in the form of our fast-moving fingers) take us where we need to go.

It’s clear that half the job of a writer is to read.

I hate to admit this (I can almost feel my first grade teacher flinch), but I actually write in other peoples’ books—jotting down what impresses me, noting how the plot unfolds, or just recording whatever floats through my transom. When I get to a turning point in a book, I might scrawl something in the margin about where I think the book will go next, or where I would go. Often I’ve made a different choice than the author.

(Writing in books could be a habit I picked up from when I was an opera singer. We always marked up our music scores–where to breathe, how to pronounce stuff, etc.)

I don’t do this to be derivative. In fact, I never read two of a favorite author’s books in a row. I’m looking for how other writers work things out. For instance, Lee Child tests his main character in big ways and small—and this testing is constant. Jack Reacher almost always passes the test, which I find interesting, and at the same time, he’s testing other people.

I map books, but I do it with the plan that I will forget about them when it comes to writing my own. I’ll write my book, but I’ll have the foundation of many different and well-tuned stories underneath.

These are the books I’ve read in my genre recently:

ECHO BURNING, by Lee Child
THE FALLEN, by T. Jefferson Parker
THE TWO MINUTE RULE, by Robert Crais
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, by Michael McGarrity
And I’m currently reading GONE, by Jonathan Kellerman.

Next up:
VANISH, by Tess Gerritsen
DARK LIGHT, by Randy Wayne White
SAVANNAH BREEZE, by Mary Kay Andrews - just for fun!