: Re: Should you read your own genre? In terms of novel writing, I tend to avoid my own genre, at least for the most part. Some of the reasons why: Genre Blindness / Genre Trap: Too much reading

@Pope4766717

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I think reading is important (as I said before: maybe more important than writing (as in "write, write, write, whatever and whenever, even if it's crap")).

Of course, your concerns are valid. Lets take them on one at a time:

Genre Blindness As other answers here have said, I think you'd mostly gain the opposite from reading genre books: you see what works (as you said yourself), which requires that you see what is used. (And "seeing what works" implies "seeing what doesn't")
Style Influences Always an issue, sure, but... you cannot eliminate influences completely anyway. Just read sufficiently different authors, and it will balance itself out ;-)
Losing Ideas Could be a concern. But then, no-one tells/told you to read all the time, even while writing your own stuff. Just separate your reading from your writing sufficiently. And of course, don't read when an idea grabs you: your idea, your own creation, has priority. Set everything else (not just reading ;-) aside and work on it until your satisfied that it's stable.

I learned ages ago that when I write lyrics (I'm a (wannabe ;-)) songwriter too), I don't do so just after having listened to some music, because the influence of what I just heard is too strong (actual experience). So, I take a break. And then get my mind into songwriting mode (actually, it does this on its own, whenever it feels like, damn thing ;-))

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