Writing Commandment Number Three: Read

3. Read

Yeah, yeah, these commandments are hardly revolutionary.  Any writer who knows anything writing will likely say Read and Write if you want to get better at the craft.

"Every good writer I know or have known began with an insatiable appetite for books." - Richard Bausch

"You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading." - Margaret Atwood

"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it." - William Faulkner

"Long before the idea of a writer's conference was a glimmer in anyone's eye, writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors." - Francine Prose

It goes on and on.  Writers have an obsessive compulsion to read.  If ever I'm feeling the dreaded writer's block (which I don't exactly believe in, but that's another blog entirely) threatening to fall on top of me, I pick out a book and read.  Whenever I'm stressed out, or tired, or bored, I find ten or twenty minutes here or there, and read.  I think this is true of any serious writer. If you don't have time to read, or feel you could go without it, you should snap your pen in half and toss your notebooks in the recycling bin. No one will have time for your writing, if you don't have time for reading.

There's no better way to learn everything from plot structure and character development to how to use a comma, or a stupid em dash, than by reading the masters that have come before us.

But rather than give my version of all the previous commands to read, I'm simply going to give a few examples of books I think a young writer (or anyone, for that matter) should read.

a).  Read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis


This, I'll admit, is totally a nostalgic choice.  I can say with a fair amount of certainty that these books are what turned me into a real reader.  I read books before this, I know I did. But I was taken up in these books, and I entered a mild form of depression as I started the seventh book, and almost lost my mind once it was finished.  There was something inside of me that started to burn while I read the series—the love of reading a good story, and I ran out to buy The Hobbit as soon as I finished.  I have never not been in the middle of a book since reading it.

b). Read Life of Pi by Yann Martel


From C.S. Lewis, I went to J.R.R. Tolkien to Madeleine L'Engle to Philip Pullman to George McDonald to J.K. Rowling to Stephen R. Lawhead to T.H. White to whoever else.  Basically, if it was a magical world, I wanted to spend time inside of it.  My friend told me about this book that was winning awards about a boy who gets stuck on a boat with a tiger named Richard. And I somehow got the picture that they talked to each other and made friends or whatever.  I thought it was magic. Maybe Richard was the new Aslan.  Maybe the boat could fly. I don't know.  But I ordered it from Amazon, and got to reading it as soon as it arrived.  I read it straight through, and I can honestly say it changed my life.

 It changed my life in two ways:

          1) It was the first 'realist' novel I had read outside of school, and began my shift from fantastic literature to realist literature.  Actually, I hardly ever read anything that's not realist anymore.  That's not to say I don't appreciate fantasy. or whatever.  I have just grown to love realist fiction. And I can say beyond doubt that Martel helped me realize that love.

          2) It was the first time I payed attention to what the writer was doing, rather than just immersing myself in the story.  I was blown away by the book.  I won't ruin the story (cause you're going to go flying to read it, right?), but I'll say that coming to the end, I realized the whole story, up to that point, may be entirely different than what I thought it was.  He was able to tell two separate stories at one time, which were the same story. or something. Read the book. It's awesome.  It started me thinking about the ways writers crafter their stories, and really kickstarted the desire to write in my brain, or gave it a boost.

c). Read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 


It's a speculative fiction of a dystopian future, something Atwood has basically mastered.  It is so outrageous, yet utterly believable as something that could happen in this world we live in.  Read it, then start recycling.

I haven't read anything of hers that I didn't like, but this was my favorite (so far).

d). Read A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby


I found this book on the discount shelf at Chapters.  It looked cool, so I bought it.  It's about four characters that meet on the same roof, each with their own plan of jumping off.  Sounds morbid, but it's a great read.  It was my first encounter with alternating points of view in the same book, and Hornby crushes it.  Each character is unique and believable and interesting.  Truthfully, almost anything I've read from Hornby has been great. He wrote High Fidelity & About a Boy & Fever Pitch & An Education & others. For a fun read that still makes you consider the world beyond yourself, read Hornby.

e). Read Alice Munro

Seriously.  If you want to see a master story teller in action. Read Alice Munro.  Every single story I've read by her has affected the way I think about writing in some way.  She's a complete genius.

f).  Read On Writing by Stephen King


I think I've referenced this book in every single blog post I've written.  The book changed my writing life in so many ways.  Truthfully, I haven't read any of his other work.  I've always been scared of it, but he friggen knows how to produce, and he has some really simple, but profound things to say about the writing process.  I think about the things he says in this book every time I sit down to write.

I could go on like this for a long time:

Joyce Carol Oates. Tim O'Brien. Cormac McCarthy. Katherine Mansfield. Julian Barnes. Emma Do\noghue. Neil Gaiman. Carol Shields. Lloyd Jones. Anne Tyler. Umberto Eco. Flannery O'Connor. David Mitchel. Milan Kundera.  Mohsin Hamid. Aravind Adiga. Barbara Kingsolver. David Shields.

Ok. I'll stop.  It is one of the most beautiful things about literature that one book, leads to another, to another, to another, ad infinitum.

If you want to grow as a writer, read books. It's the only way to learn.

At least that's what one young writer might think...

Any books you would add to a Must Read List?