I've been on a reading binge.  One book a day.  The library sends me six books every week.  What am I reading?  I can't remember because I never look at the title or the author.  Unless it is John Grishom.  I like the way he constructs a story.  I have learned to write by reading.  I look at phrasing, sentence structure and what words introduce a new paragraph.

If an author bumbles around, or gives too many descriptions of flowers, the sky, houses on the street, or what someone is wearing, they have lost me.  I don't like fol-de-rol.  I find myself skipping entire paragraphs of fop-de-rol,  looking for the next sentence in which something happens.  I'm not much on scenery.

I found that when I write, I have been starting too many sentences with: "And", or "So", or "But"--as a follow-on to the preceding paragraph.  Bad structure.  But Carolyn said it was okay to do that from time to time.  I've just been overdoing it.

I love to read.  I know a good book when I read it.  I just haven't exactly figured out what makes it good.  It isn't that it is romance, or mystery, or biography, or historical fiction, it is the way the writer presents the material.  The more I read, the better I write.

Which makes me amused at the apostle Paul and the way he wrote.  He was a rabbit chaser.  His head was full to exploding with knowledge, and when he would start a sentence, some word in it would remind him of something else, and off he would go.  One passage in Colossians that I have referred to many times: "...If you continue in the faith...and aren't moved away from the hope..." and then Paul goes of on a tangent for five verses before he finishes the sentence.

"Which is Christ in you, the hope of Glory."  In between all of that, he talks about a dozen other things before he finishes the sentence.  "...If you continue in the faith...and aren't moved away from the hope...which is Christ in you the hope of Glory.  You have to be careful when you read something that Paul wrote or you will come to the wrong conclusion.