On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, award-winning author Greer Macallister shared the following insights:
I don’t remember the time before I was a reader, just as I don’t remember the time before I was a writer. I’ve always read for the joy of it. Now, as a published author, I read for a number of other reasons as well, but the joy, if I look for it, is still there.
It’s one of the reasons I don’t have much patience for people who think they should write a book but can’t remember the last one they read once that wasn’t assigned in high school or college. People who say “I’m going to revolutionize [genre]!” without ever having read a book in that genre. People who claim proudly that they’re the first to write a book that addresses a certain situation or worldview without doing the research to figure out how many books exist in that space already.
Because for most of the writers I know, we can’t un-link the two. We started writing because we loved reading. We’re over the moon that we have become the people we once looked up to, creating stories that fill readers with emotion. We may not read at a blistering pace given life’s other demands and temptations, but if you give us the freedom and space to choose an activity, reading is going to be high on the list.
Reading is also an important job responsibility as an author. I used to say that I read less frequently for pleasure these days because I’m so often reading for professional reasons, like manuscripts to blurb, books I’m reviewing, or novels I’m interviewing fellow authors about for in-conversation events. But I’ve realized that all the reading I do, even with an expectation attached, is still a source of pleasure for me. I’ve never subscribed to the aphorism that “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” — it’s still work — but it is significantly easier to get through that work if you find it enjoyable.
On occasion, I do find that my identity as a writer influences how I read. I fully admit that if I know a novel has been wildly successful, I too often go into reading it with a chip on my shoulder, jealous of the writer’s success. I acknowledge the bias. It also turns out that in most of these cases — most recently for Lessons in Chemistry, The Wedding People, and The Correspondent — midway through the book, I find myself acknowledging Oh, yes, I get it. I’m reading differently than I would be if I weren’t a writer, yes, but being a writer doesn’t make it impossible for me to enjoy someone else’s book. I may be more conscious of structure and technique than the average reader, but when the book is good, I can still get fully lost in it.
All this to say that if you are a writer, you are also a reader. What we read changes, but why we read remains the same. We read because we are readers. We are readers because books bring us joy. And we are writers (at least in part) because we want to bring that joy to others.
Joanne Guidoccio 