The Creative Value of a Binge

My winter vacation comes to an end, and with it the end of a binge — not the usual holiday eating indulgence (although plenty of Christmas cookies were involved) but of a lengthy reading binge spent immersed in Regency romance. I started with Austen, went deep into the Georgette Heyer catalog, then branched out into modern writers, then back to Austen.

The holiday binge is over.

As after most binges, I’ve ended feeling slightly overindulged — I’ve had enough younger brothers with gambling problems, dukes with rakish reputations, and haute ton society gatekeepers to last me another six months. I also have completed a crash course in rule-bound historical romantic tension, which is just what I need for the YA historical fantasy I’m writing.

Prolonged reading binges are how I became literate in the fantasy genre and in the middle-grade category. Until those self-directed educations, I read primarily adult literary fiction, and I haven’t gone back yet. Deep and wide immersive reading is form of research for fiction writers, and for me a purely pleasurable one. I had to know the voice and rhythms before I could find my own. I needed to learn the tropes and conventions so that I could avoid or deploy them purposefully, rather than falling into them inadvertently.

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On Childish Things

This week there was another controversy where a columnist criticized adult readers of YA, believing that they should feel ashamed for reading books marketed to teens.

So what would she think of me? I write and read middle-grade novels and picture books.

The answer is that I don’t care. Someone more brilliant has said what I think:

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

This isn’t exactly true of me. When I was ten, I read fairy tales and I wasn’t ashamed. But when I was thirty, I saw adults reading Harry Potter, and I thought they should be.

Then I read it too.

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