Sigh. I think writing has ruined me as a reader

Hollow characters and thin plots (that have obviously undergone no scrutiny) annoy me now. And I read so many words or whole sentences that are poison. I'm trying to overlook these things in the novel I'm currently reading, but the first two chapters were hell on my brain.

The more I critique my own and others' writing, the more critical my eye becomes.

My husband notices the same thing about movies. As he writes more and more about films and filmmaking, he notices little things that he would have just glossed over before.

It's the curse of refining your tastes.

There's a tremendous amount of crap out there. There are books I've read where I want to reach through the page and slap the editor for not doing their job.

My problem with writing having ruined my reading experience also has to do with mechanics, but only sometimes. I'm not perfect at punctuation etc. so I'm more forgiving of those errors. However, when I try to read I'm not immersed like I used to be. I'm thinking, oh I know what she/he's doing here. Next, we'll have the 'black moment'. Or whatever. The same goes for watching films and going to the theatre. It's depressing, and from having loved reading and enjoying an average of around 300 books per year, now I hardly read fiction anymore. I think I've read two books so far in 2015. Maybe this will change as I progress as a writer and learn to distance myself, but for now I hate that I've lost the joy of reading.

Yes, in the same way that my chef cousin can't stand badly-cooked food and Mr. Putt, a physicist, can't stand watching bad scifi.

On the other hand, when you do come across a masterfully-written book, you'll appreciate its brilliance even more.

Writing hasn't done that for me. It's the reading of critiques of others and my own work that has done it for me.

Pisco Sour said:

It's depressing, and from having loved reading and enjoying an average of around 300 books per year, now I hardly read fiction anymore.

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Same here. Used to pursue books like they were made of chocolate. Any book would do. Now, not so much. And I've gotten ridiculously discerning about what I do read. If that first sentence doesn't hook, I put it down. If the first sentence does, but the rest of the paragraph doesn't, I put it down. I keep going, looking for a reason to put it down, until about page ten. If I'm still hooked by ten, the book can come home with me.

Yes. I have similarly ruined altered my reading experience. Now I have to download a dozen books at a time to find just one or two that I don't have the urge to bookwall. *pets e-reader*

And on the bright side, this:

Putputt said:

when you do come across a masterfully-written book, you'll appreciate its brilliance even more.

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It has changed my experience, but not in seeing how bad it was written. I've always put down books if it was poorly written. I've got a good enough understanding of basic writing mechanics that I can catch them quickly enough. And I've always been a skimmer, so I've always only given a story a few seconds to catch my interest (although I don't normally start from the beginning; it's the middle sections that have to interest me--so is it interesting enough in the middle that I actually want to see what happened to get to that point? In fact, even when I read the book fully, I skim the opening the quickest and don't absorb it as much as the latter parts of the book. Hmm, maybe that's why my openings are terrible??).

What has changed for me is seeing good books and ANALYZING them to see how the author tackled something to make it successful. So I'll be reading along, happy as can be, then stop to freaking ponder the execution. By the time I go back to actually reading the story I've forgotten what was going on. I've had to tell myself to stop analyzing until I've finished the book.

I have put down books and noticed typos, but I wouldn't say it is because I'm a writer as much as it is because I try to be a heavy reader. I know people say to read like a writer, but honestly, if what I'm reading is good, the last thing I am thinking about is writing. I'm just into the reading. I guess even if it's bad, I'm not really thinking about the writing as much as the story. Maybe I think a little about the language used, but even that is more through reader eyes. I don't often read things aren't pretty great in my mind. I love to be wowed by what I read. I tend to look for that more than what is wrong with it.

Oh, yeah. The book I read and re-read and loved as a teen is now a book I can't read at all anymore because the adjective abuse pounces on my face from every single sentence.

It is so terrible

After years of critting and writing, it's become harder and harder to find a novel I enjoy. It is really, really annoying. Yes, there are gems out there that are just amazing, but most of my reading time has been replaced by writing.

Funny thing is, I enjoy a lot of the novels I'm critting.

Yes and no. Yes, I am now more away of things that really bother me. I recently read a book that I enjoyed the premise, but there was something that was done in the writing that made me slam the book down and wonder why it was done. The technique was poorly executed and it irked me.

However, I'm not out there looking for it. Instead, I'm looking for the positive more. Now I read books and think well this was really well executed. I want to to this.

I have never really been able to overlook errors in grammar and punctuation. So when they exist in a book, I notice them. If the quality of the storytelling is worth it, I'll still enjoy the book but there is definitely a balance. Too many errors can just be too much to deal with.

And if the mechanics of a book are solid but there isn't that spark of a compelling story, the opposite is true -- I am not going to enjoy it nearly as much.

But I've also got a wicked Harlequin habit -- I love the formula that they follow BECAUSE it's a formula and it's exactly what I'm looking for when I grab one (or four) of those monthly titles. So while other people might disparage them as "junk reading," they're doing exactly what I want (which is helping me decompress from all the serious, dry crap I read all day).

To an extent, sure. I'm not as forgiving as once I was of trite, overused plots that bring nothing new, cardboard characters, head-hopping narration that wants to be omni but doesn't really understand what omni is, purple prose, whatever.

But I'd never call it ruining. I guess if I ever got so obsessed about it that I couldn't enjoy a read, maybe. But a good book is still a good book, to me. It's just that now I not only know why I find it good, but can *articulate* why. And I like that.

I have to switch between my writer and reader mindset. It can be hard to turn my inner editor off, but once I do, I can still enjoy reading much as always did. But then again I have basically always written so the two have always gone hand-in-hand for me.

What does really get me is when I read a bad book, I get really mopey about how that person got published but I can't.

noranne said:

What does really get me is when I read a bad book, I get really mopey about how that person got published but I can't.

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My technique for avoiding those particular mopes is to blithely assume it was a second novel of a multi-book contract. i.e. Over the course of years, the writer polished up an amazing debut novel, but then they couldn't turn out an equally-good second novel over the course of the next year.

And then I never, ever, ever go check whether that's true.

I could only pity the author under those circumstances. I'd never want to get a shit book published. I'd want the standards for achieving publication to be higher for me than for the average person.

I must be weird ... nothing can ruin reading for me. Same goes for movies. I write reviews of both, and I'm an editor and very, very picky (more about books than film, because I know less about the sausage making of the latter).

But I still get excited about trailers for movies that will probably turn out to be awful. And I still read voraciously. Sometimes I read things I don't like much out of curiosity, or for work, and I still enjoy the experience because it teaches me something about how I don't want to write. But I'm always looking for a book to love, one that will sweep me away and make me forget to notice all the tropes and devices it's using, and I feel like I still find them pretty often. Maybe I'm easy?

I'm very forgiving of poor comma placement.

I wouldn't say writing has ruined me as a reader, but it has definitely changed me. I've never been very tolerant of what I considered poor writing, but I think I'm more sensitive to "lazy" writing than I used to be. On the other hand, I also appreciate good writing more than ever.

Incidentally, I don't get angry when I read poorly written books. They actually give me hope: if this garbage could get published, surely there's hope for me. Right? RIGHT?