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It's a skill, as a reader, to be able to take things on their own terms -- to look at not what you would have done differently or what you don't like, but to look most of all at the rules and the structure that the book sets out for itself.
And it's a skill, as a writer, to be able to figure out your own vision and hew closely to it, and discard all the easy solutions and obvious possibilities to get to the exact right one.
It's hard to do both of those things at the same time.
(It's hard enough to do just one of them.)
This is why a lot of writers find it hard to read fiction while they're writing, isn't it?
Or else I'm just maundering through the book landscape going "HULK SMASH."
And it's a skill, as a writer, to be able to figure out your own vision and hew closely to it, and discard all the easy solutions and obvious possibilities to get to the exact right one.
It's hard to do both of those things at the same time.
(It's hard enough to do just one of them.)
This is why a lot of writers find it hard to read fiction while they're writing, isn't it?
Or else I'm just maundering through the book landscape going "HULK SMASH."