Episode 29: Read what you want, write what you want
In today’s installment of Fable and the Verbivore, Fable (Bethany) came to our recording session with a lie that she’d struggled with during the week and wanted to unpack, regarding what constitutes good writing. So we made a spur of the moment decision to scrap our planned discussion in favor of exploring this topic on the fly.
We both grew up with fantastic English teachers that taught us a lot about literature and helped cultivate within us a love for authors we may not have chosen to read on our own, but they also had definite ideas about what authors and genres should and should not be considered good and worthwhile reading material.
During this discussion, we challenge that belief and posit that all writing has its strong points and weak points. No writing is perfect and each genre has something unique it brings to the table, and every work we read can teach us about the craft if we are willing to approach it with an open mind. We also argue that though writing is a craft it is also an artform, and we tend to form subjective opinions of the works we read based on whether it connects with us and think that they’re objective judgements.
Our goal was to help free ourselves both as we read and write from buying into this lie. As we continue to take part in the #100dayproject, we are reminding ourselves that, though each thing we write may connect with ourselves or others to varying degrees, there are not words that our definitively worthwhile and others that aren’t. They are all worth creating.
Check out our daily words on our personal Instagram accounts under #imitatelikeawriter. Also, feel free to join us by sharing your own words.
We hope that you are staying safe and finding time to practice self-care! Keep creating and putting your voice out there!
Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore
Notes:
Fable and the Verbivore went to the same high school but different colleges, so we shared many of the same English teachers during our fromative reading years and when we discuss our teachers we are thinking of many of the same ones.
Books Mentioned:
The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
The Rose and the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)