What is Writing About?
To find out for yourself what writing is about, read a great deal. If you read a lot,
you’ll see what works, what doesn’t, and what kind of writing matters to you.
I’m most definitely not a snob about what I read. If nothing else is available, I’ll
even read a telephone book. (Possibly, the phone book beats the Mormon version of the
Bible left in so many motel rooms in this country.)
What’s good for me is likely good for you. I don’t care if you read magazines, science
fiction, smut, or great literature. Just read copiously.
The best way to learn to write is to read. In much the way that people reductively say
“You are what you eat,” they could also say “You write what you read.”
For the most part this is a good thing! The only downside is that suggestible writers
can take on the coloration of their recent reading. It is probably OK if you read
Dombey & Son and then start writing like Charles Dickens. (Particularly if you start
writing like “the dickens.”)
It’s definitely not OK--and this is a real-life experience, it happened to me--if you
go through law school, and then everything you write starts sounding like a legal
brief. (It took me a couple of years to get it out of my system and for my voice
to back to normal!)
You can’t read too much. The only possible downside is that it’s easy to take on the
tone and structure of what you’ve read most recently (or if you’ve gone to law school).
So beware of uncritically consuming treacle and passing the undigested sweets on to
the next reader!
