Roz Morris on Why Writers Should Read

Roz Morris, Author

Today, I'm thrilled to be inter­view­ing Roz Morris, author of a dozen pub­lished nov­els, most of which she ghost­wrote for other authors. Eight of them made the best­seller lists, although she can't tell you what they're called. This year she pub­lished her first novel under her own name, My Memories of a Future Life.

Why do authors read? We all know why we should read more: to learn the rules, to under­stand the lan­guage bet­ter, to fig­ure out which sto­ries work and which don't. But I wanted to get deeper than shoulds. Why do expe­ri­enced, pub­lished authors actu­ally read? Roz is about as expe­ri­enced a nov­el­ist, not to men­tion blog­ger, as they come, so I hope this gives you an insight into a real author's read­ing life, and how to improve your own.

Enjoy the interview!

First of all, Roz, what are you read­ing right now? Is it for plea­sure or for "work"?

Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant. In trans­la­tion, I might add—my French can't even cope with a restau­rant menu. But I'm just as likely to be read­ing a Robert Harris thriller or a Marian Keyes novel as a lofty classic.

Is it for plea­sure or for work? Most of my read­ing is prompted by some­thing I'm work­ing on, and I was led to Pierre and Jean by a novel I'm incu­bat­ing. Although the research is prov­ing to be a plea­sure too.

Do you gen­er­ally read more for plea­sure or for your writing?

I try to make sure that every few books I read some­thing just because I feel like it. But the more I delve into a sub­ject for a novel the big­ger my read­ing list becomes—and the more that directs what books I choose. Also, I'm a slow reader—good writ­ing can keep me trapped in a book far longer than it should take to read it. So 80% of my read­ing is prompted by my writ­ing because I get so absorbed.

Why should new writ­ers read?

If they don't read, how can they write? My impulse to write comes from read­ing. Once I've been in the grip of a good book, it gets me to go and write my own.

Stephen King said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write." What do you say?

Reading—the good and the bad—inspires you. It devel­ops your palate for all the tricks that writ­ers have invented over the years. You can learn from text­books about the writ­ing craft, but there's no sub­sti­tute for dis­cov­er­ing for your­self how a writer pulls off a trick. Then that becomes part of your experience.

Also, I watch a lot of films to refill the story well. The dis­ad­van­tage with books is, as Stephen King was prob­a­bly address­ing, that read­ing takes time—especially if, like me, you can be bam­boo­zled by a beau­ti­ful sen­tence. But the aver­age movie is ninety min­utes to two hours. In that time you can get an entire story under your belt. I get a lot of my sto­ry­telling ideas from films.

Do you only read in your genre? Or do you read books in all kinds of genres?

I read a lot of genres—anything from Jane Austen to Jack Vance. But I recently read Ann Patchett's Bel Canto—a story about a siege in an embassy that turns into a gar­den of Eden. Although it had flaws it still haunts me.

My brain is usu­ally wired to pick up on the odd and unusual, but my TBR pile includes Sue Cook's Force of Nature—a study of a cou­ple deal­ing with in vitro fer­til­iza­tion and donor embryos. I peeked at it and thought it was beau­ti­fully observed, so that's my next read. I love being tempted to read out­side my usual tastes by good writing.

When you were first start­ing out in fic­tion, did you have any books that you stud­ied? Can you tell us how you stud­ied them?

Interesting question—wonder if I can remem­ber?! There weren't nearly so many writ­ing books around when I was first play­ing with the craft. I read Teach Yourself Creative Writing by Dianne Doubtfire and Story by Robert McKee. I also dipped into books on per­son­al­ity test­ing to play with char­ac­ter types.

Mainly, though, I learned my craft from know­ing a lot of writ­ers (and, reader, I mar­ried one). Before I ever dared try it 'prop­erly' I loved dis­cussing with them what I liked about nov­els I'd read, and what I didn't like. So my edu­ca­tion in writ­ing came—as I have been describing—by read­ing other good fic­tion and get­ting a nat­ural edu­ca­tion from what I noticed. Now I write writ­ing books, so per­haps I shouldn't say that! Also I used to go to a writ­ing group run by the lit­er­ary agent Juri Gabriel. We used to cri­tique each other's work, and watch­ing him guide this process was a ter­rific education.

Are there any authors who tremen­dously influ­enced your style?

I am a style sponge. Possibly this is why I can ghost­write. I have to be very care­ful what I read while I'm writ­ing, espe­cially towards the final stages of an edit. When I was going through My Memories of a Future Life for the final pol­ish, I didn't dare read any­thing but Shakespeare and poetry. Not that I am imag­in­ing I attained such heights, but they were suf­fi­ciently far from prose to not colour my char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, while spurring me to do better.

There are two kinds of writer who are fatal for my style. The English satirists like Kingsley Amis—I love his spark but I can't take a story seri­ously after an encounter with him. And Graham Greene—his quiet, dis­turbed intro­ver­sion leaks into my work. You've heard of pas­sive smok­ing? I get pas­sive Graham Greene.

Should young writ­ers seek out these influ­ences for their own writing?

Everyone has to find their own muses. It's essen­tial to have a range of writ­ers who make you raise your game. I'm always try­ing to improve my sto­ry­telling and my use of lan­guage, so I gather writ­ers who will make me sweat for bet­ter words and imagery, and who seem to han­dle the reader effortlessly.

I recently read Heat by William Goldman—he's the mas­ter of the twist, although by the time I got to the end I was a lit­tle dizzy with it. My muses change all the time as I dis­cover writ­ers who excite me in new ways.

Do you think read­ing is dying?

Not at all. Although we have ever more ways to be enter­tained, nar­ra­tives will always be pop­u­lar and there is a par­tic­u­lar plea­sure in liv­ing them through words on the page. There will always be chil­dren who will choose a book as com­pany, even if they're read­ing it on an elec­tronic device. Novels wouldn't have been around so long if a lot of peo­ple didn't like them.

Worst novel you've ever read?

I usu­ally have the sense not to start read­ing a novel I think I'm going to hate—unless I have a rea­son to study it. I tried Lord of the Rings and couldn't work up much enthu­si­asm for homely hobbits—but I don't think that makes it a bad book. Similarly, I couldn't get very far in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

If I'm not get­ting on with a novel I ditch it, so there are very few bad books I've stayed with to the end. However, The Da Vinci Code def­i­nitely was bad—plodding, shriek­ingly obvi­ous, and plain dumb. My hus­band told me off because I gave up before the char­ac­ters even got out of the Louvre loos. He wagged his fin­ger at me, picked it up, and started to read it and didn't even get that far. Reading is so much a mat­ter of taste.

I'm in awe of Martin Amis's lin­guis­tic facil­ity, but he's so supe­rior to his char­ac­ters that I don't enjoy time in his com­pany. There may come a time, though, when I dis­re­gard that and appre­ci­ate him more. There are always books wait­ing to be grown into—and new trea­sures for us to dis­cover as writers.

Thanks Roz! You can find Roz on her blog and fol­low her on Twitter at @dirtywhitecandy and @byrozmorris.

What are you read­ing right now? And why are you read­ing it, for plea­sure or "work"?

Back to How to Conduct an Interview Like A Journalist.