Can Reading Novels Effect Your Productivity?

It is no secret that I have been far less productive writing wise since I finished putting together my collection, but I am pleased to say that that while I am still not prolific I have started writing poetry again - phew! I had put my lack of productivity down to various things - the fact that I put so much effort into getting the work finished by my Arts Council deadline, the fact that I wrote so much new material whilst I was working with my mentor, the all but demise of my regular workshopping group, even the possibility that once the collection was finished and I no longer had deadlines that I wasn't as motivated to write. All of these reasons may in part be true, but this week another reason also occurred to me.

I am in the Readers Circle reading books for potential inclusion in next years's Writers' Centre Norwich Summer reads programme, which means that as well as reading poetry I have also been reading a lot of short story collections and novels. Whilst reading (good) poetry and short stories often leaves me feeling inspired to write, I find that I reading a novel rarely, if ever, has the same effect - even if it is an outstanding read. I am not sure why this is - it may be because novels are so immersive - they draw you into another world, and create a reality that we believe is real while we are reading. Or it may be that the novel just works on a different area of the brain to poetry or art, but whatever the reason it seems likely that the amount of novel reading I have been doing during the last couple of months may have a direct correlation with my decreased productivity in the poetry writing department. It will be interesting to see of my urge to write increases after the programme is finished in January.

Reading and Writing

In the last few days I have found myself trying to analyse how (and if) my reading patterns affect my writing. I have written very little poetry in the past couple of months, and while it's true that this might have a direct correlation with certain events that have occurred in my life recently, I found myself also wondering if it is to do with what, and how much, I am reading.

I know for instance that I write more poetry if I am reading poetry - but not just any poetry, it has to be something really inspiring. In fact some poetry collections are so inspiring that they send me running for my pencil an notebook. It is like some kind of weird alchemy - I don't know how it works but it does - in the same way that morning pages can up my creativity levels. I have been reading poetry though, and quite a bit, but none of it has really given me that poetry high that makes me want to write. The last two collections that did that were "Raptors" by Toon Tellegan and "Autobiography of Red" by Ann Carson. Nothing I have read over the summer has come close to them sadly.

The other thing is that I have been reading a lot of fiction - both novels and short stories. I am reading more than usual because I am in the Summer Reads reading circle, but I am reading other books as well those. I don' t know if reading a lot of fiction stops me writing poetry, or if I am choosing to read a lot of fiction as some sort of escapism from real life. I know that when I went through a prolific poetry phase last year I was hardly reading any fiction at all, but that could just be coincidental of course.

Change and Upheaval

Once again I am finding the work/writing balance difficult to maintain. Upheaval and change in my working life seems to have a knock on effect on my writing, which is hardly surprising I suppose. I think the fact that some of my work is writing guest blog posts also has an impact - this week I have been using my creative muscle to write about online games rather than for writing and editing poetry. Of course I could just be making excuses - what I really need to do is finish writing my covering letter and send out my collection to publishers. I am hesitant though, when you have worked so long and hard on something, it can be quite a blow if it gets rejected.

On the plus side there have been some positive things happening - this week I ran a workshop called "How to love poetry" as one part of Writers' Centre Norwich's Summer Reads programme. I was very nervous - I had never tried this kind of workshop before, and I wasn't sure what kind of response to expect. It was a boiling hot day and I had massively over-prepared. I felt it went quite well, but I am my own worst critic so I came away just seeing all the things that I could have done better. Today, however, someone sent me a link to a blog post by one of the participants - her response was exactly the kind of thing I had hoped for - she is now wiling to give poetry another chance. I felt elated - what more could I ask for? You can read her blog post here.