I’ve heard a few times over the years a writer should read two thirds more than they write.
Or maybe it was three quarters . . . or 80 per cent more . . . I forget the ratio, but the point is the same, to be a competent writer one has to read a lot.
I do read a lot, whether I’m competent yet is for others to decide, but my reading lately is mainly restricted to piles of news stories on the Internet, and when I say lately, I mean as far back as recent memory, though I miss reading actual literature.
Like books.
I used to be a voracious reader of modern fiction like Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, even Dan Brown sometimes, then became even more hungry when I moved onto the classic stuff.
At one point, over the span of three years, I was reading almost two novels a week and it was about this time I read Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea on the advice of a friend.
He pestered me to check it out because I was writing a lot of fiction back then, so he figured I was pretty much required to read it.
“With the amount you write, it’s insane you haven’t read any Hemingway,” he said.
I didn’t have an argument; I just hadn’t gotten around to checking the writing of Papa yet and was probably grinding my way through another author’s body of work.
I eventually gave in and picked up the copy he’d conveniently left on my coffee table, beside the ashtray, where he knew I’d find it.
When I started I found Hemingway’s famously sparse prose boring and kind of clunky. The first few chapters actually annoyed me in terms of readability, but I eventually caught on to his voice and rhythm and finished the book in that same sitting.
This isn’t really a Sisyphean task; for those who haven’t read it, it’s just a little more than 100 pages, but I don’t remember the last time I had a chance to burn through something so quick.
After that I naturally read the entire bibliography of his major works in chronological order.
My hunger for books continued until I went to college for journalism at the ripe age of 26 — a move inspired by reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in my late teens, surprised? — but then it started to wane.
By the time I started my first new job in newspapers I was reading roughly three books a year instead of the near 20 I had leading up to that point.
Now I think I’ve read like two or three in the past two years. I finished Homer’s Odyssey a little more than a year ago because I wanted to see how James Joyce’s Ulysses lined up (I must confess, I understood very little of Ulysses and I know I’m not alone on that one. Try and read it, I dare ya) and I’m currently 70 pages into Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.
I started this one when I arrived in Estevan in the beginning of May; if you do the math, that’s only a few pages a day, but I think I know what the problem is.
When I got to college I started reading textbooks and writing everyday for assignments and when I started at the Lloydminster Source I began writing even more to keep up with the workload, plus doing all of the associated reading that comes with research, as well as keeping up more on other news.
Spending the bulk of your days in front of a computer, you naturally start absorbing more text and after a full day of reading and writing, the last thing on my mind when I get home is looking at more words.
Usually I just want to put some brainless entertainment on the television and let my mind relax.
I read a page or two in the morning when my mind’s fresh because that’s all I have time for and after that it’s news, news, news, so I have to find a way to incorporate leisure reading into my routine, but I’m struggling for options.
Get up an hour earlier so I can read more? Set up time on the weekend and tear through as many pages as I can?
I’m not sure, but I’ll have to figure it out because I think I’ve fallen way behind and I miss the sensation of regularly flipping that last page and thinking about the experience of the novel I just read.
Sincerely,
Lost Bibliophile
