What will the future of reading look like?
Self-described writers who don’t have time to read are just fooling themselves. You must first be a Reader before you can be a writer.
First, we need to understand the difference between a Reader and One Who Reads
I saw a statistic years ago that the average person reads one book per year (and the number of readers is still shrinking). These folks don’t make time to read every day. They read when they have time, usually a book that caught their interest, but they aren’t driven to read–they can take it or leave it, and in some cases it may take them a year to get through one book.
Readers, with a capital R, are on a mission. They make time to read every day. They always have books in their queue, so when they finish one, another is ready to go. You see them reading while they sit in waiting rooms, while they sit in their cars waiting to pick up their kids from school, and while they wait in lines at stores.
Readers know they will never be able to read all of the good books that have been published, and they know that many more good books are being published every year–and this idea frustrates them if they dwell on it.
Readers read. Period. If they didn’t have books, they would read condiment labels (like Burgess Meredith’s character in the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough At Last”).
I’ve also encountered people who describe themselves as writers but claim that they don’t have time to read. The bottom line is: in order to write something that anyone will want to read, you must first be a Reader, capital R.
Writing teachers may point the way, but reading will propel your journey. It will teach you the basic themes, it will teach you how to use the language to create emotion, it will teach you how to use technique, and it will teach you how to cut and revise–to write uncluttered prose and, as Elmore Leonard put it, “to leave out the parts that people skip.”
There are only 36 dramatic situations, and everything that has ever been written fits into one (or more) of them–if you’re not widely read, you most likely will write stories that have been told before in the same way that they have been written before. Writing is more than just telling a story. It is putting a new spin on an old idea–all writers do it. Self-described writers who don’t read can’t put new spins on old ideas because they don’t know what the old ideas are.
But there is one kind of writing nonreaders can do. They can have a fair amount of success writing labels for condiment bottles.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.