A Writer's Reading Habits !
Many people think that they can become good writers without ever reading anything. This belief is false as well as foolish. If a person can become a player without ever seeing the field, and if a person can become an artist without learning about colours, then only can a person become a writer without reading.
It has been seen that of the good writers of the world, most were good readers also. Also, most of the successful writers have a very good personal library of their own. The reasons are obvious.
If you ever want to become a successful writer, you will have to develop regular, planned and systematic reading habits. In this lesson we would like to tell you the following things about developing reading habits.
1-You have no right to write if you do not read.
2-You will never be able to write if you do not read.
3-You must Know what you should read.
Let me explain in detail each of the above statements:
You Have No Right To Write If You Do Not Read: You must have heard about people who exhort others to live a perfect life, but who continue themselves in their imperfections. People discover this very soon, and reject their teachings. In the same way, people start avoiding a writer who wants to write for others but, who is not willing to read what others have to tell him. If you still do not plan to read, then please note the following things:
YOU WILL BECOME ABNORMAL: People who want to write but not read betray an inner attitude that they have a lot of knowledge to give to the world, but the world is not qualified to give back anything. They might not be conscious of this inner feeling, but in spite of their ignorance it produces great personal destruction.
Such writers very soon develop abnormal attitudes and communication patterns. They hog up all the available time for themselves in all oral communication, and they find it more and more difficult to listen patiently to others. Very soon this develops into an intolerance when others take even the minimum amount of time to express their genuine need and problems. All meaningful two-way communication comes to a halt. In the absence of feedback from others, he is forced to live in the world of his own creation, and this very soon results in a one-sided view of life and a distorted perception of reality. He begins to think that others also share his interests, priorities, and outlook for life. He does not hesitate to impose his views and judgments upon others because for him there is no other reality or other side of the coin. This attitude towards oral conversation simultaneously translates into his writings.
The writer who is interested only in what he has to say soon brings his distortions into his writings. When an article is rejected, he is unable to reconcile with it. When the editor or a critic says that the content of his writings are one-sided, errant, or outdated, he becomes bitter against them. He tries to convince everyone, who know better, that the editors and critics are abnormal. He might get published here and there occasionally, but he lives a disappointed and broken man, never joining the ranks of successful or influential writers.
YOU BECOME OUTDATED: Everyone understands that technical writings become outdated soon because new discoveries and inventions keep surfacing. However, most people do not realize that even creative writings (or fiction) can also become outdated if a writer does not keep in touch with the changes and developments in his field of writing. A writer producing ghost stories when science fiction is the norm will find it impossible to publish himself.
KEEP READING: The only solution to escape from the above mentioned problems is to keep reading. It helps you to discover what is going on in your field and also in related as well as unrelated fields. It helps you to evaluate your strengths as well as weaknesses. It orients you to what has already been written in areas of your interest.
The greatest benefit is the control that you get over your pride. A writer untouched by the world of writing thinks too highly of himself. Reading the work of others makes him realize him what he is. What's more, this teaches most of them to take in as much knowledge as is possible but to give out only what is the distilled essence, instead of vomiting every undigested information that is in his head.
You Will Never Be Able To Write If you Do Not Read: You will never be able to write if you do not read. Or, to be more precise, you will never be able to write anything worthwhile if you do not read deeply and widely. By wide reading I mean reading related to as many different subjects and fields as possible. By deep reading I mean obtaining in depth information about your fields of interest and related subjects. This is a necessary condition to make one's writing significant and worthwhile.
WITHOUT READING YOU WILL KNOW LITTLE ABOUT SOCIETY: Since all writers write for human society, it is necessary for every writer to know the contemporary society as well as what would benefit them. For example, even the most brilliant article about the necessity of annual servicing and maintenance of air-conditioners will be of absolutely no value to slum dwellers, if that is the group for which you write. On the other hand, if you give them an article on how to regulate the inside temperature of their houses using cheap products and even things from the junkyard, they will greatly be benefited.
To know what will benefit the society, you should know what kind of people make up the society in which your published writings will be circulated. You should know both the broad makeup as well as the smaller segments within this society. Further, you should also know about the common problems, handicaps, evils, needs and aspirations of people. Only this will enable you to write something that touches their hearts and needs.
READING WILL PUT YOU IN TOUCH: Reading what others write will immediately put you in touch with the society around you. Of course, reading is not the only way to know about society, and no writer should restrict himself to books alone. What is important is to realized that books and periodicals are a significant source of bringing information about the society from other points of view. Further, since no writer can interact with all the segments of the society for which he writes, books become indispensable for obtaining reliable information.
IT WILL PROVIDE FEEDBACK: I have told you before that every writer needs to know what people think about his writings. Some kind of feedback is needed so that he might know whether these writings are helping people, touching their lives, and offering them comfort, motivation, and hope. There is no use piling up words if it helps only you or the editor -- who might have accepted your submissions merely because has to publish something.
All writings must help people immediately or in the long term, and only feedback from people will help you to determine if you are able to meet this goal at least to some extent. One of the best ways, and the only way available to many writers, is to read what other say about his writings and also about the subjects of his writing interest. The letters and comments column of publications is a very helpful place to look for this king of information.
Feedback in the form of letters, comments, reflection, and testimonial about your writings will be dispersed in a wide range of locations. Only a person with wide reading will be able to spot these comments.
Let me share with you a personal experience. I do most of my writing and publishing in the English language. Yet comments about these have appeared in Hindi and Malayalam languages, published from geographical areas where I do not usually publish. These comments came to my attention only because I am in the habit of reading and browsing through publications in these languages.
You might never become fluent in other languages, and the purpose of the above story is not to persuade you to learn another language, but to illustrate the diverse places where comments about your writings might be found. ONLY A WIDE READING WILL PROVIDE YOU SUFFICIENT FEEDBACK.
AVOID BOREDOM: Probably you have heard your teachers saying that you must attack the tough problems first and leave the easy ones for the end. This is not correct or productive in most cases. That is why even teachers teach the easy subjects first and leave the rest to the end, even though they advise the opposite to the students. Unfortunately, uncritical repetition of this stupid phrase has resulted in a philosophy of life among us where everyone tries to attack the tough, difficult, boring, and unintelligible first, and leaves the interesting, awakening, and charming things to the end. The result is predictable. The attempted tasks never get done. By the time people finish struggling with the difficult, they are left with neither the energy nor the inclination to try the easy and interesting.
Unfortunately this philosophy colours the way many people choose books. They feel that they should choose the difficult, academic, scholarly and boring works first, and leave the more interesting books for the children. This is plain self-deception. Everyone should start his reading with the lighter and the interesting reading first, and should then graduate to the tough and the challenging.
DO NOT BE A PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL: Start your reading habits with whatever interests you most. Then give about twenty percent of the time to more heavy, but necessary, stuff. Increase this gradually to a proportion where you feel that you are reading sufficient heavy stuff. Further, keep a good supply of variety at hand. It should include both the light comics as well as the researched monographs. Then, when your mind wanders off, just place the learned books aside without any guilt and occupy yourself for some time with the comic. Give a change to your mind so that it becomes fresh and relaxed. Read whatever relaxes your mind -- a story, a jokebook, the gossip column of the newspaper, or whatever is handy and kind to the tired mind.
ADOPT READING-ENCOURAGEMENT STRATEGIES: Encouraging yourself and discipline yourself to read is a matter of strategy. I will suggest a few, but this is only a representative list, and is not exhaustive in any way. You will be able to think up many more if you try.
The first strategy is to keep a variety of books in your home. The second one is to keep them in every place where you sit -- in the living room, the bed room, the dining room, and even the courtyard. (Do not keep them in the toilet, because reading there is very harmful for your bowel movement practices). Then, open the books and read even if you have only five free minutes while you wait for someone. Do not worry about forgetting what you read during such small intervals. Almost everybody does forget initially, but as the habit develops, memory retention also increases.
Another strategy is to turn the TV on only when you do not want to miss a special programme. Remember, there is a vast difference between a programme that you might be interested to watch and another one that you do not want to miss at any cost. Do not miss the letter, but try to avoid the first category completely. TV is a great thief of useful time, and every writer will have to see to it that it does not make unplanned and unpermitted inroads into his life.
ENLIST THE FORCE OF HABIT: Anyone who has tried to break an unwanted habit knows the tremendous force that a habit exerts upon people. Interestingly, the same force can be used in an effective way to build up your reading habits.
All habits start with a single act today, and another one tomorrow. Soon it reinforces itself so strongly that you are forced to obey its call. In the same way, regular reading also tends to reinforce itself after a certain maturing period. Therefore, hang on, find out some free time every day. Break the initial resistance, motivate yourself by introducing variety, and keep going for some time. Soon it will turn into a habit and then it will keep itself alive by self reinforcement
Not only in reading, but also in everything in which a writer indulges you can use the force of habit to keep that activity alive. We will mention many such activities at appropriate places in this course, but this should not hinder you from keeping your eyes so that you yourself might discover how the force of habit can be exploited to help attain your goals.
You Must Know What You Should Read: A person who has not spent time with book-lovers, libraries, and bookshops might feel that it is easy to choose what to read, but this belief is far from truth. So much is published today that it is very difficult to keep up with it. On the other hand, no serious, productive, or mature writer can shrug of his responsibility by saying that he cannot keep up with the job of reading.
Ideally a writer should read all the new and exciting publications that reach the market every day, at least in his field of interest. This, however, is neither possible nor needed if he develops his strategy properly. For example, there is plenty of duplication in every field. Further, a lot of published material is useless for the mature writer. Thus one can gradually learn to eliminate all publications falling into these two categories. This will come only with some experience, and do not be disappointed if you find some duplication and time killers initially. You must try to read every significant publication that is available in your field. At the same time, you should not become so narrow in your choice that you begin ignoring related subjects and publications. Also, one must try to widen his knowledge by reading significant books that do not belong to the subject of his specialization.
It is surprising and shocking to see how many writers remain ignorant of many good publications in their field of interest even years after they start writing in that field. One can be excused for not possessing an important publication due to shortage of money or because of the non availability of the publication, but complete ignorance about the existence of such publications is an unpardonable omission. Anyone who wants to become a significant writer must keep in touch with world of writing -- specially in his fields of interest.
Book Review is an area in which many periodicals and newspapers are taking keen interest now. There are even some monthlies now fully dedicated to book reviews alone. The trend is catching fire, and you should keep your eyes open. Try to browse through the book review columns of periodicals as well as through review-magazines. If any of them seems to be specially interesting or helpful, try to read them regularly.
If you are new to the field of writing, and if you are not sure of what kind of writings are popular, then you should read in a way to discover subjects that are popular as well as of interest to you. You can begin with reading one or two popular national and local newspapers. Almost all cities and towns have reading rooms, and you can locate them easily if you are willing to look earnestly for them.
The next thing to do is to try to read some good national and international periodicals. Finding these may not be easy, but see if you can persuade a college lecturer, University employee, or anyone working in an office that gets this kind of publication, to help you for few days. Many embassies of foreign countries also publish general-interest as well as specialized periodicals. Some of them will send them even free of cost to you. Others will require a subscription amount, but usually it is only a nominal amount when one compares their cost with similar commercially produced periodicals.
Novices in this field often lament that no periodicals suitable for them are available. This is the result of ignorance. What surprises me is the unbelievable variety of periodicals that are available in all cities and towns of our country. I had the privilege of spotting, and eventually subscribing to numerous interesting magazines during my travels all over the country. Many a times the sample comes from a footpath dealer in second hand books. You can also find such gems, if you are willing to look -- specially when a friend tries to hurry you up by saying that there can nothing be of consequence in such a humble place. Believe me, they can be completely wrong. Even if they are right, there is no harm in looking through the books. BECOME A COMPULSIVE HUNTER FOR BOOKS AND MAGAZINES.
You must take special interest in "Digests". These are usually collection of articles from world over, and therefore give you what you would otherwise never be able to read. Reader's Digest is the most commonly known and most widely circulated Digest, but it is not the only digest in the market. Many similar digests of articles, books, and special topics are available. They will expose you to a wide world.
Many periodicals, books, and handbooks published specifically for writers are also available. Look in the railway bookstalls and other similar locations whenever you travel, and you will be able to discover some gems. Names of some of these publications are listed in another lesson in this course. Also, whether you are a creative writer or a technical (factual) one, you must always find an opportunity to read the classical books of the world. These are fiction as well as non fiction books that have outlived their contemporaries because they have something unique. You can find a reference to these books in any general-knowledge book.
Keep your eyes open for any and every new periodical and book. Check everything to see if it can contribute anything to your expertise either in your area of interest, or on any subject connected to that, or even to your overall knowledge.
Do not forget, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO WRITE IF YOU DO NOT READ. Further, you will never be able to write anything of significance if you do not cultivate a love for books. Take this advice seriously, and develop a PASSION for good books and periodicals.
Original article contributed by Dr. Johnson C. Philip. Revised by:
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