When I was falling in love with writing as a 17-year-old and enrolled in a mentorship program at the Toronto Public Library, author M.T. Kelly told me, “Dave, writing is reading, reading is writing. You have be as much a bookworm as you are a word nerd.”
Those words stayed with me for decades but I worry that too many other writers don’t follow that same advice. I’ve met dozens of writers who don’t read articles beyond the newsletters pushed into their inbox weekly, or the social posts flooding their feeds.
That has to change.
For any writer, whether creative or journalistic, reading is critical to being a strong writer. We learn from what pulls us into a story, from the phrases that ignite a fire in our brain. When we come across le mot juste, as Baudelaire said, we know we’ll somehow find a way to bring those words into our own writing.
Writers have to read a lot. I’m not talking a book a week but at least a couple longreads over that period, maybe a short story collection every month. Read heady complex stuff, read funny poetry, read books you might not even think you’ll like. And it’s fine if you don’t. Forward-thinking writers also learn from what not to do.
The more I expanded my reading range, venturing beyond John Irving books to non-fiction and poetry, the more I found beautiful expression I never would’ve spotted in my usual favourites. When we go out of our comfort zooms, we’ll strengthen our writing skills and level up in ways that might have seemed unimaginable before.