The Power of Reading—For Writers

As a writer, I can’t emphasize how important reading is to my process. Aside from my love for books, which was what got me into writing in the first place, reading has always been a way for me to jumpstart my mind, and I’d forgotten about this magical process until just recently.

I’d been in a writing funk this last year, muddling through the myriad of mediocre thoughts and uninspiring sentences, wondering what had afflicted me. Yes, it’s something most every writer struggles with from time to time. And while I was still reading many books, some good and some just not my taste, my conscious mind was not reading with an eye toward writing, but reading merely for the sake of enjoyment, and although there’s nothing wrong with that, there are times when the author must juggle caps to get where he or she wants to go.

Mind you, reading an entire book is an accomplishment of sorts, but writing one is Herculean a task that requires all one’s efforts. Sometimes reading a book is like sledging though a minefield of mud, and this happens even with the best of books. Try getting through Ulysses or Moby Dick. It takes concentration and fortitude, and swatting away all those pesky life annoyances that tend to get in the way, like work, sleep, spouse, movies and television shows, as well as the social media demons that threaten to steal away our attention spans. And so for these reasons, I began to view my reading habits as a chore, and in some cases work.

And it showed in my writing, and in my creative process as a whole, and my mindset began to shift to the point where I didn’t think I could write successfully again.

Then I sloughed off convention and reimagined reading, not viewing it as a chore but as something different. A story that happens in the moment, organically and with time’s arrow. It came as an epiphany that I didn’t need to follow any patterns or rules when it came to reading. Or writing. I returned to the books I loved and read from selected passages, rather than read the whole book, delving into the details of work with unmitigated glee. If I could unshackle the chains of reading, then I could certainly do it with my writing.

So I reimagined the art of writing and freed myself from the constraints of the crime genre. Focused on the moment and the characters needs. It felt liberating and opened up a whole treasure of creative expressions, freeing me from my previous myopic mindset.

And now I’m back writing with more joy than before, pushing scarily into the realms of the unknown, unsure of where I’m heading but at least making progress. We’ll see where my new creativity goes, but it feels good to be back in the game again.