Reading While You Write

Selma is conducting a poll of writers: Do you read? How often and how much? What are you reading right now? Do you read while you're writing?

Selma says: I had a conversation with a friend of mine who teaches a creative writing course at the local university about writers and reading. She says that most of her students don’t read. They are adults who are paying fifteen thousand dollars to do a degree and they don’t read. They are too busy learning how to be writers. They are too busy writing, to read.

Something is definitely wrong with that scenario. The way I look at it is, how can you become a writer – a good writer – if you don’t read?

Here's my response:

I used to read about 100 books a year, almost entirely fiction. The year I concentrated on writing my first real novel (i.e., second novel if you count the “training novel”) I decided that I would not read while I was writing after I found myself taking on Dickens’s style of writing while re-reading Oliver Twist. It was a very obvious example otherwise I might not have noticed. I decided that I needed to develop my own voice first before I could again combine my two joys of writing and reading. I lasted almost a year without reading fiction and it was really hard. It took a lot of discipline to not reach for a book, and I’m afraid I really don’t understand people who can exist without needing to read. And I don’t think you can be a good writer if you don’t need to read; if you’re not addicted to stories. Nowadays I can read and write at the same time without it affecting my style, but I have become lazy I think. Or perhaps just demotivated. It feels easier to pick up a book and read than it does to write these days.

Right now I'm re-reading Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. This is the first book in a trilogy that itself is part of an eleven-book series. Now that I've read all eleven I wanted to start again to pick up the foreshadowing and nuances that a first time read precludes. My husband thinks I'm nuts. What about you? 😉

Reading While You Write
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4 thoughts on “Reading While You Write

  • Saturday at 9:18 PM
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    Hey, thanks for the mention. I am currently reading Solar by Ian McEwan. I adore him. He is so brilliant that I veer between laughter and tears every time I read him. I alternate between feeling inspired and feeling like I should give up because there is no way I could ever be as good a writer as him.

    Listen to the opening sentence –
    ‘ He belonged to that class of men – vaguely unprepossessing, often bald, short, fat, clever – who were unaccountably attractive to certain beautiful women.’

    He just creates a visual of the protagonist from the get go. I also love how he uses two adverbs in the first sentence. TWO. He is flipping the bird to agents and editors with that one. He is my hero!

  • Monday at 7:12 AM
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    I’ve just started The Thousand by Kevin Guilford. I’m barely into it so can’t say much about it.

  • Friday at 4:06 AM
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    I go through those phases where I can’t read if I’m writing. But it’s true, you HAVE to be addicted to stories, writing them, watching them, and READING them if you want to be a good writer.

    Alex

  • Thursday at 11:13 PM
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    I cannot stop reading. I know a couple of novelists (like I’ll be when I grow up) and they don’t read current novels by contemporaries. Why? Two reasons – – they don’t want to pickup style tics and they don’t want to be asked to comment on them. I couldn’t do that. I think it is my job as a writer to find out what is in the zeigeist. And my style, my voice, has been sharpened over almost 60 years so probably won’t change if I read a book. I read every damn thing I can get my hands on. Right now I’m reading The Artful Edit by Susan Bell (wonderful!) and Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs (I’m medium on this). I just finished a Kate Atkinson collection of themed short stories ‘It’s not the End of the World’ – fantastic as is everything the woman has penned.

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