Overthinkings: Reading

I’ve always heard that to be a good writer you have to be a good reader. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, but what about people who don’t? Can you be a “good” writer without picking up books that other people have written? (Note: I am including audiobooks as reading.)

Modeling is important. No question. In grad school we were encouraged to read books in the genres in which we dabbled. In undergrad we did an exercise where we took a book we loved and used it as a jumping off point for a short story of our own—not to plagiarize but to have an outline of sorts. I used a Stephanie Plum novel as the basis for my short story “Gucci Good” about a shoe loving woman who tracks down run away rich kids while driving her octogenarian grandfather around to Costco on sample day. It was the first thing I published. 

The ideas behind this exercise is that we tend to write what we like to read and  if you have a familiar outline, it takes the pressure off to create something fully from scratch. 

There are no new ideas under the sun. Solomon said that— or whomever wrote proverbs—and generally yeah, everyone is recycling something. Reading keeps us from recycling too closely. Most submissions ask you for comps—books that are similar to your own—and it saves a lot of time to keep a list of current offerings. Book trends fade quickly and agents want to know how your work stacks up against popular work of the now. 

Reading great books can be incredibly inspiring. Reading mediocre books can be a great lesson in what not to do. Don’t finish bad books; take them back to the used bookstore. 

So what makes a book good? Well, my metric is “how long does it keep me in the bathtub?” If I’ve had to add more hot water, I’m probably going to recommend. That said, there have been a handful of good books in my life that I have had to read slowly. One Hundred Years of Solitude took me weeks to read (I had a very understanding college prof) because it was so rich with things to ponder. 

I tell my kids that they need to be familiar with some books, but they don’t need to love them. As a grownup who isn’t being tested on my knowledge of 19^th century British lit, I can pretty much read what I want. At this stage in my life reading is an escape, or I am doing research. The only way Proust is making it on my shelf is if he is showing up as a background character somewhere. Especially for busy parents, life is too short to read books that don’t keep you in the tub till you’re wrinkly. 

So reading is important, but do you have to read to be a writer? I don’t know. I get plenty of great ideas and inspiration from visual media. I create a lot of stories collaboratively through RPG’s. But while tv shows might offer great dialogue or plot arcs, they won’t model how to describe setting. There is no need to explain how a character gets from place to place. We see expression on faces which must be dictated on the pages of books. 

I am going to admit something here: all of my writer friends are also readers. Maybe not three hundred books a year readers (me either) but all of us have stuffed bookshelves and piles around the house. So while I can’t definitively say “Yes you must be a reader to write” I will say that it helps. A lot. 

Writing Exercise! Think of your favorite book/short story. Use it as a template for a short story of your own.