How I Got Here - Part. 1 (Read Widely)

I'm not quite published yet. But I feel so close I can taste it. Maybe that's just a momentary delusion and Imposter Syndrome will rear its ugly head tomorrow. Or maybe I'm feeling the arc of my own growth as a writer.

Recently, I found myself reflecting on my long journey Here. And by "Here," I mean this feeling of confidence in my craft, this strong grip on brainstorming, drafting, and revising toolkits (which I didn't even know I needed back when I was first starting out). The solidifying sense of who I am as a writer.

So this post is the first in a series describing the major turning points that brought me Here.

Read Widely

After graduating from college some (*coughety-cough*) years ago, I emerged with a fresh craving for leisure reading. I'd been an avid reader up until college, when all the required reading burned through any time or interest in extra reading (my suddenly booming social life might also have had something to do with it). But post-college, my hunger for books returned with a vengeance.

Except I had no idea what to read. I had this misguided idea that now that I was an adult, I should no longer read YA novels (gasp!). At the library, I started checking out books in almost every adult genre, including those whose back-cover summaries and first pages caught my interest, as well as those that topped Book Review lists.

I disliked quite a few books. But I also found many I enjoyed. Venturing into the wider literary world, I started learning about my own reading tastes.

What I Didn't Like

• Bare-bones prose

• Lack of atmosphere

• Depressing themes without hope or reprieve

• Cardboard-cutout characters

• Lots of graphic violence and gore

• Overly experimental forms that took me out of the story

  
  

What I Did Like

• Voicey or beautiful prose

• Atmospheric settings and rich worldbuilding

• Uplifting themes and stories of challenges with hope at the heart

• Character-driven stories and other stories with multi-dimensional characters and emotional depth

• Perspectives, places, and histories that were new to me

• Highly relatable aspects that resonated with some specific part of me (e.g. as a second-generation South Asian, as a writer, or as an awkward introvert)

• Different narrative devices and forms that stimulated me as a reader and plunged me deeper into the story (e.g. symbolism, irony, foreshadowing; well-done multi-POV, alternating timelines, epistolary formats, etc.)

Some of these elements are more commonly found in certain genres, so reading widely exposed me to the gamut of ways to write. A literary smorgasbord. Sampling a little bit of everything allowed me to develop tastes I might not have if I stuck to one or two genres.

And these lists of preferences are not exhaustive or fixed. They've continued to evolve, especially as my reading preferences expanded and narrowed in spurts over the years, reshaped by what I needed from a book in different stages of life.

But right out of college, back when I was gearing up to attempt the very first draft of my very first novel, understanding why I did and did not connect with different books helped me learn what kind of writer I wanted to be. I was inspired.

Now, tackling that first novel is a whole different story 😅. At first blush it seemed as though my varied reading habits ruined my story, because I swear, I threw every genre under the sun in there. It was a YA novel (even though I had stopped reading YA at that point!), and it included a romance, a mystery, a ghost story, a family drama, and a historical subplot. Oh, and it was almost 200,000 words.

Yup. 🫠

Suffice to say, jumping back into the reading game and refining my tastes was only the start of my writing journey. What was the next step? That, dear reader, is a story for another time.

(But hopefully soonish. Watch this space!)