So this past week I took my friend's advice and decided to read a Kurt Vonnegut book. The one I chose to read first was Cat's Cradle. I started it on Monday, figuring it would be a good book to read while I was commuting, thinking that I could make it last for the better part of a month that way. Needless to say, I was done with it three days later.
I still need to read more of his books (I now have Slaughterhouse 5), but he may well become my new favorite author, provided the rest of his books are as good as Cat's Cradle, and I expect that they will be.
More than that, however, Vonnegut showed me that I'm not crazy to write the way I do. See, I've long toyed with the idea of writing a book, but I've never really been able to get it going because I've tried to alter my writing to be more like the authors I've read. See, until Vonnegut, I had never come across an author who wrote like me, so I thought I had to change my writing in order for it to be good.
Now, I'm not saying that I'm as good an author as Vonnegut; I'm just saying that I have a similar style to him. It's kinda cheesy to say this, but his book liberated me as far as writing is concerned.
Before reading his book, I had come up with a few book topics and written a few pages here and there, but I could never really get into it. In the few days since reading his book, however, I've doubled the amount of written. On top of that, I have a clear view of the storyline of my book.
It's a weird sensation, having such a clear view of what I want to do in my book. I've never had it before, and it's making it really hard to think of anything other than my book. I think I now know what I'm going to be occupying all my free time with next semester.
