Lazette Gifford had a post last week about reading nonfiction. That’s something I rarely used to do–not because I hated it or found it boring, but just because I like fiction better and given limited reading time, I’d rather read novels.
But she’s right that you get more depth, and run across different ideas, when you read widely rather than to look up specific bits of information for specific projects. At least I do. (Plus, you can read what you want rather than get annoyed at the tedium of scouring books in an attempt to find some tidbit that no one has apparently bothered writing down.)
(This is going to sound stupid, but one of the things that got me reading more nonfiction was the realization that I didn’t have to read the whole book (since I didn’t read the whole books in college, this should have occurred to me a lot sooner). This is why there’s hardly any nonfiction books on my list of books I’ve read–that only lists books I’ve finished. I’ve got stacks of books where I’ve read just a few chapters.)
So what does this have to do with writing? We’ve all heard “write what you know” a million times. It’s right up there with “show don’t tell” on the list of advice given to beginning writers that is often painfully misinterpreted. If we all wrote only what we knew, the speculative fiction genre would be pretty empty, and there’d be a ridiculous glut of novels about struggling writers. Boring.
The second half of that really should be “learn what you don’t”. That’s where research comes in, whether you’re looking up something for a specific project or just exploring. Being a reporter was really useful for this, actually. I could have learned the same things without that job, but it’s much easier to get it by osmosis. (Someday I’ll write the story based on the village administrator’s line, “You really open a can of worms when you start talking sidewalks.”)
At my current job the things I run across don’t tend to be quite as useful for fiction. But we’ve got a library, where I often take time at lunch to read bits of National Geographic, the Smithsonian, New Scientist, Science News, Scientific American, and whatever else catches my eye (plus the Harvard Business Review and Publisher’s Weekly).
Right now I’m reading a chapter about Teotihuacan in a book on prehistoric Mesoamerica that I picked up at the Field Museum in June. What are you reading?
Interetsing insight… my reading tends toward fiction and nonfiction books about writing fiction. I must broaden my world!
A lot of the nonfiction that I read all the way through is books I’m proofreading or indexing. Lots of travel books, some biographies. Also, writing books: currently most of the way through Negotiating a Book Contract (not that I’m expecting to need it soon), and I’ve got Chuck Wendig’s 250 Things and Nick Mamatas’s Starve Better on tap.
But . . . I voraciously read on-line. Science blogs, space blogs, new and unusual things. I follow NASA on Twitter and get e-mails from Popular Science and National Geographic (oh, yeah, and we have a subscription to that, so I skim it every month). I chase down links, I talk about time travel and space vs. ocean exploration with my son, and I read history and talk politics (occasionally) with my husband. Nonfiction is everywhere.
Oh, and whenever I’m at the library, I always check out the new fiction and the new nonfiction racks. Never know what might look interesting.
I forgot to mention — podcasts! There are podcasts for everything these days, and you can listen while you do other things. An excellent way to get at least an overview or an insider’s peek into a nonfiction field.
I read business books all the way through, usually, but they don’t do much for my writing. The newspaper, too–ours is small, but I read a lot of things in the NY Times.
Podcasts are great, and iTunes University. I never find enough time to listen/watch, though. There are a lot of really good writing podcasts that I listen to instead (I should probably do a post on that). I do like the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast a lot.