Reading is Writing

Getting your hands into a new book can be a difficult task, especially for any person not already able to consistently read without trouble. 

For students, it can even be stressful to try whittling down your GoodReads list against the ever-constant tide of schoolwork, actual work, and whatever third-party-sourced pains of simply living in college. However, for creative writers, I believe reading is not only essential, but necessary when engaging with the craft. In an age where one out of three U.S. adults read fiction on their own terms, understanding that reading is writing is important for any person wishing to improve their short story and novel writing in the long run.

One major anxiety I’ve seen pop up online in fledgling creative writers is that when a writer engages too often with others’ works rather than one’s own, they will lose their sense of originality when producing their own manuscripts. However, writing is not about approaching the desk and trying to create the most unique story ever made.

 In fact, not knowing what is out there only increases the chance of creating a story that brings little to the wider table of literature. The shelves of a library or bookstore contain a multitude of characters, plots, settings, approaches, styles, and discourses that could speak to anyone about anything, and hiding one’s eyes from those ideas only narrows what else can be said. To know what to write requires knowing what is available to be read, and what niches are available to be built on or expanded upon.

While this reality can be daunting (as I feel whenever another Barnes & Noble email shows me tens of books I’m missing out on), remaining in touch with the genres you wish to write on is usually enough to see what ground is being covered and how. Expand out of the authors you recognize, gain a new favorite to obsess over, find another to learn from. If you’re planning to publish one day, pay attention to the most recent books and series out there: industry professionals, from authors to agents, recommend comp titles that call attention to current patterns of style and genre from the past five years or so. 

However, being sure to keep close to the classics of your genre and exploring pieces beyond your interests can also inspire your writing into a new direction. Reading should not be done just to keep in touch with what sells or what is most popular at the moment; it also should be done to expand one’s skills in writing. 

Prose, for example, is an aspect of writing that emerges from all the authors you read. Styles of prose can vary in terms of its floweriness, succinctness, simplicity, or elaborateness built upon the traditions and practices of authorial movements, eras, genres, branching in its uniqueness all the way down to the individual novelist. No author speaks the same way, even when working within the space of the literary landscape they share with other writers. Reading others’ works grants you knowledge on how to produce one of your own and how the prose can make you feel. The performance of prose storytelling has to be witnessed to understand the nuances of how it is written. 

Finally, I firmly believe originality does not emerge from a writer existing in a vacuum. People do not learn how to communicate with others by cutting themselves off from the world, the people who talk within it, the people they talk about. The same goes for storytelling, for fiction writing is a conversation that constantly warps and shifts and bends. To the people who believe in the craft, its greatest value lies in its ability to have authors freely show readers their perceptions of the world and the cultures and people that influenced them. In removing oneself from the conversation, a person becomes shut off from the many avenues of inspiration and emotion that books can and do express.

 It is not weakening or discouraging to see a story that at first feels exactly what you want to write, and therefore unapproachable to write again. Rather, it is necessary for a writer to see that work and map out a path beyond it, to expand its premise, to condense its resonance of feelings, to bring out something new from its ingredients and make a dish on your table. Reading is writing precisely because they feed into one another: one cannot exist without the other, and doing both grants a writer the deepest appreciation of the craft they could ever hope to have.

Written by Christopher Calub. Chris is an English major who wants to get more people reading and definitely get reading the Earthsea Cycle. Also a lover of adobo and pho.