I’ve been consuming audiobooks at a frenetic pace. Used to be that I only listened to audiobooks on the road. They’d get me through long road trips. I’d pop one on to and from work. Lately I listen to them all the time. If I’m working in the garage, audiobook. If I’m laying in bed, audiobook. Some nights I am up till near dawn listening. I do not count this as a bad thing. In order to write well one must read well and often. I’m not reading with my eyes so much as my ears anymore, but I am reading nonetheless.
I read everything on the audio. It started out with trash novels–W.E.B Griffen thrillers and pulp detective works. From there my desires exploded outwards experimentally. I started listening because of readers. I moved from Dick Hill to Will Wheaton and Kate Mulgrew. I picked up King and Khosseni. I explored self-help. I read documentary news. I did everything I felt I would not do on paper in audio form and I grew as a reader from it. I also grew as a writer.
There was a period of imitation that is common to all writers. Whenever I heard a new style I tried it on; attempted to absorb it into my own system like Super Amazo. That is what helps build me up as a writer. I learn about what I am not in the hopes of refining what I am. All of that is possible soley through the efforts of reading more, and thus learning more.