5 ms·

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why write, when you aren’t steeped in wonder of storytelling? This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. I recently finished a novel (now shopping around for agents, which was hard enough pre-AI but now...) and reading was integral to writing it. I know good sentences. I know the style of prose I like to read. I know how things can veer between florid and poetic and where the line is. I know how a sentence can be completely different if you read it as though it was spoken, instead of to yourself (some of mine are written to be read.) I know the things that annoy me: dropping out to put thoughts in italics; descriptions that specify instead of evoke; characters talking without it leading somewhere. (And much more.) How do I know this? From reading. And I want to tell the story. It was a story that grew, that I think will anger the right people (it's not too kind to Musk or VCs or the Russian Orthodox Church), and yet is simply an adventure, tumbling our characters from situation to situation like they fell overboard while navigating rapids. Ultimately I wrote a book I wanted to read. It turned out to be about post-apocalyptic startups and sea monsters. Someday I'll publish, I hope. And no doubt someone will read it and find style they dislike, learn from it things they don't want to do in their writing, either. But I also hope that there are moments in the book that will inspire someone else, in that they too will want to write, based on what they read.

Luucas40 2mo ago
I also completely agree with this part. However, writing is its own muscle that needs to be trained and sometimes reading more can also be procrastinating in disguise. What helped me a lot has been: Read a lot because you love it Force yourself to write everyday, even if it’s for 5 minutes or you might postpone it forever
- vintagedave 2mo ago
  I agree. My wife is a poet and writes every day. I don't, but before focusing on a novel I spent the past couple of decades periodically writing short stories. There is a skill to writing, and it needs the ten thousand hours just like everything else. But I cannot imagine doing it without reading first, and alongside.
Guestmodinfo 2mo ago
Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences are simple, the vocab is basic. Thank you vintage dave
- johngossman 2mo ago
  How far are you willing to go? If you want a novel that really emphasizes language over plot and character, read Ulysses.
  - johngossman 2mo ago
    I see Joyce was already recommended. How about Borges then?
- HappyPanacea 2mo ago
  I have some vague memories of people praising the prose of The Name of the Wind but being less impressed with its plot.
- vintagedave 2mo ago
  I really enjoyed Josiah Bancroft's Babel series: start with Senlin Ascends. I feel like he enjoys writing sentences -- a strange way to put it, but, I think he does. But this is an extraordinary book on its own. For the ultimate in non-basic vocab, try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The English translation of Metro 2033 is amazing. You can feel the stylistic differences originating in the Russian language, and it's a very evocative horror story with slightly longer sentences and richer language than ordinary books. Both the Babel books and Metro 2033 (especially) were inspirations for me, writing my novel. And Wolfe is one of my literary heroes, one of the most amazing writers I have ever read. Every one of his novels is rewarding, often through not just language but complexity of plot and narrator. He uses unreliable narrators a lot; beautifully, in one of his series the narrator has amnesia and cannot remember what occurred the previous day, so writes notes to himself. (Soldier of the Mist. Also rewarding once you figure out the name and location references.) An older classic: Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan is extraordinary in language, but also in the rhythm of sentences. Definitely one written to be read with a voice, not just internally. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville has dense prose. Wonderful book, very rewarding to read.
stratocumulus0 2mo ago
Since we are on HN, the analogy that comes to my mind is becoming a founder in an area you have no expertise or even sincere interest in. Not a rare phenomenon at all.
wiseowise 2mo ago
> And I don't get it. Money, audience, attention, building a community around your ideas, pushing agenda, there are thousands of reasons why someone can like to do X without doing Y. And the one that trumps them all: they just feel like it.
Gooblebrai 2mo ago
> This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. Because the idea of being a writer is more appealing that the action of writing
- xprnio 2mo ago
  I feel like there’s parallels to be made for everything that has potential upside without clarity into the “downsides” unless you yourself get into them. Now when AI can “do everything”, everyone* (exaggeration) wants the potential upside of (1) being a software engineer, (2) being a write, (3) being a solo business owner, etc without wanting to put in the effort to learn how to do it.
zmgsabst 2mo ago
I’m working on a whitepaper on a layover. > I know good sentences. I know the style of prose I like to read. I know how things can veer between florid and poetic and where the line is. I know how a sentence can be completely different if you read it as though it was spoken, instead of to yourself (some of mine are written to be read.) Your perspective doesn’t really speak to me at all — because I’m writing as the way to explore and articulate ideas, while I’d get rid of the words as an unnecessary mess if I could. (And do when I can: diagrams, math, etc.)
- nottorp 2mo ago
  The parent post wasn't talking about technical writing. There is reading and writing for fun, remember?
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
chmike 2mo ago
> I don't get it Is it hard to understand that for some people it may be difficult to read ? It might be due to motivation issues, thrust issues, or concentration issues. While at the same time they may have a rich inner imagination or thinking that they would like to share. My impression is that humanity might miss valuable insight by rejecting whatever is not "well written" whatever the reason might be. You may feel yourself very luck if you don't have any difficulties to read and write. Avoid to judge severely people who don't share the same facilities.
- dev1ycan 2mo ago
  Yeah, I don't think anyone is missing anything from someone who doesn't know/like how to read, sorry. There's other mediums to express ideas that isn't books if you are functionally illiterate.
  - bluebarbet 2mo ago
    I'll resist the temptation to dunk on that last line. The case for reading (and why its demise may lead us to dark places) was laid out very recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...
- Ekaros 2mo ago
  I think there is lot of fair questions if such person is able to effectively write. And write in a way that enough people would be willing to spend time reading it. Context is important. The blog discusses people taking training to be writers. Which I take means they aim to do it at least some way as career. And that puts lot higher bar for what they should be producing. That is like someone aiming to be artist in visual arts never would even look at any other visual arts. Or understand the history and such. Probably not that useful education if you aim to be hireable or sell.
- hrnnnnnn 2mo ago
  Imagine instead the post was about people who want to make music but don't listen to it. I literally cannot imagine being a musician who doesn't listen to music.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
conradludgate 2mo ago
I'm not someone who typically reads books, so I have some perspective. Although I'm not the type of person who would fool myself into actually exploring the medium of writing. Everyone likes stories in some form. Everything has a story and it's natural for the brain to invent new stories. Some stories are addictive - brain worms - you just need to explore the story you developed. Writing is the cheapest medium to explore it. I'm certain if I wrote a book no one would want to read it - but maybe it's still a good story.
- Guestmodinfo 2mo ago
  If it speaks to you, it would speak to others. In the times of AI slop more so.
PaulRobinson 2mo ago
As the old quip goes: people don’t want to be writers, they want to have published a book. You can turn this around as well: people don’t want to read, they want to be well read. The difference is “effort and process” versus a status. People want the label, but don’t want to do the work to get there.
- bluebarbet 2mo ago
  Nicely put. When I read, "I always knew I wanted to be a writer", I always think to myself, "Oh yeah? But did you know what you wanted to write?" Anecdotally, it feels like I've seen that line in a whole bunch of early-20th-century biographies and journalism - back at height of the profession's prestige, perhaps not coincidentally.
  - caseyohara 2mo ago
    It's perfectly normal to be drawn to a field without knowing exactly what you want to do in it. "I always knew I wanted to be a doctor" ... "Oh yeah? But did you know what medical discipline you wanted to practice?"
- cousin_it 2mo ago
  Yeah. I've seen the same puzzling thing in game development. People don't seem to want to make good games! They want a hat that says "I made a game". That done, they want a hat that says "my game is successful", so they go on subreddits asking for promotion advice. Honest comparison with existing state of the art is seen as annoying; advancing the state of the art isn't seen as a goal at all.
  - tatjam 2mo ago
    I'm a bit of a victim to this mindset. I don't particularly play many video games, except the occasional one that clicks, but love making small game experiences and similar. I find that gamedev programming is very fun and engaging. Nonetheless, I don't think that I have the combination of skills and creativity (nor game knowledge) to make a game as great as those that have clicked for me in the past ;)
allanbreyes 2mo ago
I hope you publish, and I hope you tell that story. And I hope people read it. There's a sobering article recently published in The Atlantic[1][2] about the end of reading and how we're in a postliterate age. We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus that the original author talks about being so critical for writing. I think it's the same muscle that lets us think. Quoting from The Atlantic: > What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If people become overreliant on AI to write for them, they could lose the capacity to interrogate or even develop their own views. These are quintessentially human capacities. Accelerated now by generative AI, I fear that the end of reading goes hand-in-hand with the end of writing. I've totally sworn of AI for reading and writing. Maybe that makes me a Luddite, but I don't want to lose those muscles and I don't want the world to become a place where humans no longer read or write or think. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-... [2]: https://archive.ph/Rpquh https://archive.ph/Rpquh
- svara 2mo ago
  > We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...) Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books. It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual superpower.
  - YinglingHeavy 2mo ago
    That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.
    - shnock 2mo ago
      How so? The masses are composed of individuals... who can commit to continuing to read. Are you talking about incentives?
wyclif 2mo ago
I was quite fortunate to have an AP English teacher my senior year of high school that understood this advice, and expounded on it often. I recall that he boiled it down to one simple line: Garbage in, garbage out. What he meant by that was that it's not enough to simply read. You have to read high quality literature if you want to become a writer. You can't expect to read nothing but news, comic books, National Lampoon, MAD magazine (and in our era, blogs) and become a good writer. It just doesn't work that way. It's like trying to get physically healthy by eating junk food.
- YinglingHeavy 2mo ago
  Do you think the masses have a taste for anything but 'junk food' writing at this point?
  - wyclif 1mo ago
    Well, there's no accounting for taste. Chuck Berry, the famous rock and roller who wrote "Johnny B. Goode" saw that song get outsold by a throwaway novelty song he also wrote called "My Ding-a-Ling." The masses may have poor taste, but writers are supposed to have higher aspirations. Writers are not the consumption public, no matter how much they try to cater to them. The writer is called to a higher standard. We are not "content creators."
- letmevoteplease 2mo ago
  “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” - Faulkner
  - wyclif 1mo ago
    Yeah, I'm familiar with that quote but as great of a writer as he was, I don't think Faulkner was right about this. To extend his carpentry analogy, if all you read is pulp then you are going to become a pulp producer as a writer.
stingraycharles 2mo ago
I agree with what you’re saying, but the original statement was “why be a writer when you don’t love reading?”, to which I can give many arguments. But if it’s specifically about fiction novels, then sure, I agree.
JKCalhoun 2mo ago
I read a little. I suppose my own excuse for not reading more is that I am too often disappointed in the stuff I have read—been recommended to read. I would however like to write a thing that I would like to read. (If that makes sense.) I suppose we'll see then if that makes me a shitty writer. (Probably. But that could also be from having not written anything of significant length ever before in my life.)
- vintagedave 2mo ago
  Your motivation is perfect. I think the absolute ideal one to have. Go for it — and when you finish I’d love to buy a copy. (Or if you want to talk writing in the meantime, my profile -> website -> about -> LinkedIn (I know! The horror!) is surprisingly the best way to contact me. Either way: May you have good luck and a fluid pen.)
pmpmpmpm 2mo ago
I think because these people don’t see writing as a process, they see the finished product…either they don’t understand that writing isn’t just an action, it’s a synthesis that requires raw materials. Or maybe they don’t understand that experience isn’t sufficient raw material. You need experience and skill to create a story that sounds good and resonates. I love reading so much I can’t imagine not loving it, but when it’s made to be hard when you learn or it’s presented as a chore it’s harder to develop that love. Teaching kids and other adults to love reading by reading to them and reading yourself is something every reading adult can do!
shnock 2mo ago
You could always post it on a web-serial site like: https://www.royalroad.com https://www.royalroad.com I have seen that to be a viable path to publishing many times now, as well as other benefits like building a community of readers.
- orthoxerox 2mo ago
  The first problem with web serials is that you write your weakest chapters first and release them into the wild. The second problem is writing too much. I am reading a popular web serial right now to see what's all the fuss is about and all I want is to edit, edit, edit it into something more concise and refined. Don't write YA novels that are five times longer than War and Peace, please.
vector_spaces 2mo ago
One tip: I suggest that you stop cluttering your writing with parentheticals. If it's worth saying at all then it's likely not actually a parenthetical. If it's not worth saying, then you should cull it. Yours seem to mostly fall in this latter category, in my assessment anyway Decide what you are trying to communicate and be sure that every word is in service to that message and that message alone. For example, you are discussing the practice of writing. That's why I'm in this thread, as a reader. In the middle of a sentence about finishing your novel, you mention via parenthetical that you're looking for an agent. Maybe the intent here was self-promotion -- you hope an agent or someone who knows one will read this -- fine. But if you can't decide and plan to use a parenthetical instead, know that the reader will be paying a dear cost: the sentence containing the parenthetical will be substantially more painful to read. Subsequent uses will be worse. By that second paragraph, you blew your parenthetical budget, and yet you went on to deploy three more. Parentheticals need to be vanishingly rare as they are an eyesore. Yes, if you'd like to die on that particular hill, you can use them with stylistic intent. Go for it. But for the reader it will probably grate.
- vintagedave 1mo ago
  You're right, and I appreciate the feedback. My fiction prose is different to my informal, quick comment-writing prose, FWIW.
pulkitsh1234 2mo ago
It's the same thing with Ted Talks, it has become a vanity metric.
PUSH_AX 2mo ago
All books are written, not all writing is for books.
groundzeros2015 2mo ago
> people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. Some of the best books are not from writers, but people who have something to say and writing happens to be a medium.
- Detrytus 1mo ago
  Well, if a person has a good story but can’t write, for example some civil rights activist, or war/catastrophe survivor, they will often use a ghostwriter to help with the actual writing.
  - groundzeros2015 1mo ago
    That’s not what I’m referring to. Good writing is not limited to professional writers, and focus on the medium can often be a distraction from good ideas.
protocolture 2mo ago
Yeah I have had some variant of the conversation: >Help I need help worldbuilding to add <specific element>! >Me: Hey the authors in these 3 books do that pretty well. >Uh thanks but can you just tell me what works? Over and over again. I would actually be happier if these people kept their embarrassing lack of interest in reading between themselves and their LLM>
hammock 2mo ago
There is a book called “Reading Like A Writer” by Francine Prose that really helped me form a greater appreciation for reading and richness out of doing it.

Luucas40 2mo ago

I also completely agree with this part. However, writing is its own muscle that needs to be trained and sometimes reading more can also be procrastinating in disguise. What helped me a lot has been: Read a lot because you love it Force yourself to write everyday, even if it’s for 5 minutes or you might postpone it forever

vintagedave 2mo ago
I agree. My wife is a poet and writes every day. I don't, but before focusing on a novel I spent the past couple of decades periodically writing short stories. There is a skill to writing, and it needs the ten thousand hours just like everything else. But I cannot imagine doing it without reading first, and alongside.

Guestmodinfo 2mo ago

Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences are simple, the vocab is basic. Thank you vintage dave

johngossman 2mo ago
How far are you willing to go? If you want a novel that really emphasizes language over plot and character, read Ulysses.
- johngossman 2mo ago
  I see Joyce was already recommended. How about Borges then?
HappyPanacea 2mo ago
I have some vague memories of people praising the prose of The Name of the Wind but being less impressed with its plot.
vintagedave 2mo ago
I really enjoyed Josiah Bancroft's Babel series: start with Senlin Ascends. I feel like he enjoys writing sentences -- a strange way to put it, but, I think he does. But this is an extraordinary book on its own. For the ultimate in non-basic vocab, try Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The English translation of Metro 2033 is amazing. You can feel the stylistic differences originating in the Russian language, and it's a very evocative horror story with slightly longer sentences and richer language than ordinary books. Both the Babel books and Metro 2033 (especially) were inspirations for me, writing my novel. And Wolfe is one of my literary heroes, one of the most amazing writers I have ever read. Every one of his novels is rewarding, often through not just language but complexity of plot and narrator. He uses unreliable narrators a lot; beautifully, in one of his series the narrator has amnesia and cannot remember what occurred the previous day, so writes notes to himself. (Soldier of the Mist. Also rewarding once you figure out the name and location references.) An older classic: Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan is extraordinary in language, but also in the rhythm of sentences. Definitely one written to be read with a voice, not just internally. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville has dense prose. Wonderful book, very rewarding to read.

stratocumulus0 2mo ago

Since we are on HN, the analogy that comes to my mind is becoming a founder in an area you have no expertise or even sincere interest in. Not a rare phenomenon at all.

wiseowise 2mo ago

> And I don't get it. Money, audience, attention, building a community around your ideas, pushing agenda, there are thousands of reasons why someone can like to do X without doing Y. And the one that trumps them all: they just feel like it.

Gooblebrai 2mo ago

> This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. Because the idea of being a writer is more appealing that the action of writing

xprnio 2mo ago
I feel like there’s parallels to be made for everything that has potential upside without clarity into the “downsides” unless you yourself get into them. Now when AI can “do everything”, everyone* (exaggeration) wants the potential upside of (1) being a software engineer, (2) being a write, (3) being a solo business owner, etc without wanting to put in the effort to learn how to do it.

zmgsabst 2mo ago

I’m working on a whitepaper on a layover. > I know good sentences. I know the style of prose I like to read. I know how things can veer between florid and poetic and where the line is. I know how a sentence can be completely different if you read it as though it was spoken, instead of to yourself (some of mine are written to be read.) Your perspective doesn’t really speak to me at all — because I’m writing as the way to explore and articulate ideas, while I’d get rid of the words as an unnecessary mess if I could. (And do when I can: diagrams, math, etc.)

nottorp 2mo ago
The parent post wasn't talking about technical writing. There is reading and writing for fun, remember?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]

chmike 2mo ago

> I don't get it Is it hard to understand that for some people it may be difficult to read ? It might be due to motivation issues, thrust issues, or concentration issues. While at the same time they may have a rich inner imagination or thinking that they would like to share. My impression is that humanity might miss valuable insight by rejecting whatever is not "well written" whatever the reason might be. You may feel yourself very luck if you don't have any difficulties to read and write. Avoid to judge severely people who don't share the same facilities.

dev1ycan 2mo ago
Yeah, I don't think anyone is missing anything from someone who doesn't know/like how to read, sorry. There's other mediums to express ideas that isn't books if you are functionally illiterate.
- bluebarbet 2mo ago
  I'll resist the temptation to dunk on that last line. The case for reading (and why its demise may lead us to dark places) was laid out very recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-...
Ekaros 2mo ago
I think there is lot of fair questions if such person is able to effectively write. And write in a way that enough people would be willing to spend time reading it. Context is important. The blog discusses people taking training to be writers. Which I take means they aim to do it at least some way as career. And that puts lot higher bar for what they should be producing. That is like someone aiming to be artist in visual arts never would even look at any other visual arts. Or understand the history and such. Probably not that useful education if you aim to be hireable or sell.
hrnnnnnn 2mo ago
Imagine instead the post was about people who want to make music but don't listen to it. I literally cannot imagine being a musician who doesn't listen to music.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

conradludgate 2mo ago

I'm not someone who typically reads books, so I have some perspective. Although I'm not the type of person who would fool myself into actually exploring the medium of writing. Everyone likes stories in some form. Everything has a story and it's natural for the brain to invent new stories. Some stories are addictive - brain worms - you just need to explore the story you developed. Writing is the cheapest medium to explore it. I'm certain if I wrote a book no one would want to read it - but maybe it's still a good story.

Guestmodinfo 2mo ago
If it speaks to you, it would speak to others. In the times of AI slop more so.

PaulRobinson 2mo ago

As the old quip goes: people don’t want to be writers, they want to have published a book. You can turn this around as well: people don’t want to read, they want to be well read. The difference is “effort and process” versus a status. People want the label, but don’t want to do the work to get there.

bluebarbet 2mo ago
Nicely put. When I read, "I always knew I wanted to be a writer", I always think to myself, "Oh yeah? But did you know what you wanted to write?" Anecdotally, it feels like I've seen that line in a whole bunch of early-20th-century biographies and journalism - back at height of the profession's prestige, perhaps not coincidentally.
- caseyohara 2mo ago
  It's perfectly normal to be drawn to a field without knowing exactly what you want to do in it. "I always knew I wanted to be a doctor" ... "Oh yeah? But did you know what medical discipline you wanted to practice?"
cousin_it 2mo ago
Yeah. I've seen the same puzzling thing in game development. People don't seem to want to make good games! They want a hat that says "I made a game". That done, they want a hat that says "my game is successful", so they go on subreddits asking for promotion advice. Honest comparison with existing state of the art is seen as annoying; advancing the state of the art isn't seen as a goal at all.
- tatjam 2mo ago
  I'm a bit of a victim to this mindset. I don't particularly play many video games, except the occasional one that clicks, but love making small game experiences and similar. I find that gamedev programming is very fun and engaging. Nonetheless, I don't think that I have the combination of skills and creativity (nor game knowledge) to make a game as great as those that have clicked for me in the past ;)

allanbreyes 2mo ago

I hope you publish, and I hope you tell that story. And I hope people read it. There's a sobering article recently published in The Atlantic[1][2] about the end of reading and how we're in a postliterate age. We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus that the original author talks about being so critical for writing. I think it's the same muscle that lets us think. Quoting from The Atlantic: > What’s at risk is nothing less than the ability to think for oneself. If people become overreliant on AI to write for them, they could lose the capacity to interrogate or even develop their own views. These are quintessentially human capacities. Accelerated now by generative AI, I fear that the end of reading goes hand-in-hand with the end of writing. I've totally sworn of AI for reading and writing. Maybe that makes me a Luddite, but I don't want to lose those muscles and I don't want the world to become a place where humans no longer read or write or think. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-... [2]: https://archive.ph/Rpquh https://archive.ph/Rpquh

svara 2mo ago
> We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...) Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books. It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual superpower.
- YinglingHeavy 2mo ago
  That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.
  - shnock 2mo ago
    How so? The masses are composed of individuals... who can commit to continuing to read. Are you talking about incentives?

wyclif 2mo ago

I was quite fortunate to have an AP English teacher my senior year of high school that understood this advice, and expounded on it often. I recall that he boiled it down to one simple line: Garbage in, garbage out. What he meant by that was that it's not enough to simply read. You have to read high quality literature if you want to become a writer. You can't expect to read nothing but news, comic books, National Lampoon, MAD magazine (and in our era, blogs) and become a good writer. It just doesn't work that way. It's like trying to get physically healthy by eating junk food.

YinglingHeavy 2mo ago
Do you think the masses have a taste for anything but 'junk food' writing at this point?
- wyclif 1mo ago
  Well, there's no accounting for taste. Chuck Berry, the famous rock and roller who wrote "Johnny B. Goode" saw that song get outsold by a throwaway novelty song he also wrote called "My Ding-a-Ling." The masses may have poor taste, but writers are supposed to have higher aspirations. Writers are not the consumption public, no matter how much they try to cater to them. The writer is called to a higher standard. We are not "content creators."
letmevoteplease 2mo ago
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” - Faulkner
- wyclif 1mo ago
  Yeah, I'm familiar with that quote but as great of a writer as he was, I don't think Faulkner was right about this. To extend his carpentry analogy, if all you read is pulp then you are going to become a pulp producer as a writer.

stingraycharles 2mo ago

I agree with what you’re saying, but the original statement was “why be a writer when you don’t love reading?”, to which I can give many arguments. But if it’s specifically about fiction novels, then sure, I agree.

JKCalhoun 2mo ago

I read a little. I suppose my own excuse for not reading more is that I am too often disappointed in the stuff I have read—been recommended to read. I would however like to write a thing that I would like to read. (If that makes sense.) I suppose we'll see then if that makes me a shitty writer. (Probably. But that could also be from having not written anything of significant length ever before in my life.)

vintagedave 2mo ago
Your motivation is perfect. I think the absolute ideal one to have. Go for it — and when you finish I’d love to buy a copy. (Or if you want to talk writing in the meantime, my profile -> website -> about -> LinkedIn (I know! The horror!) is surprisingly the best way to contact me. Either way: May you have good luck and a fluid pen.)

pmpmpmpm 2mo ago

I think because these people don’t see writing as a process, they see the finished product…either they don’t understand that writing isn’t just an action, it’s a synthesis that requires raw materials. Or maybe they don’t understand that experience isn’t sufficient raw material. You need experience and skill to create a story that sounds good and resonates. I love reading so much I can’t imagine not loving it, but when it’s made to be hard when you learn or it’s presented as a chore it’s harder to develop that love. Teaching kids and other adults to love reading by reading to them and reading yourself is something every reading adult can do!

shnock 2mo ago

You could always post it on a web-serial site like: https://www.royalroad.com https://www.royalroad.com I have seen that to be a viable path to publishing many times now, as well as other benefits like building a community of readers.

orthoxerox 2mo ago
The first problem with web serials is that you write your weakest chapters first and release them into the wild. The second problem is writing too much. I am reading a popular web serial right now to see what's all the fuss is about and all I want is to edit, edit, edit it into something more concise and refined. Don't write YA novels that are five times longer than War and Peace, please.

vector_spaces 2mo ago

One tip: I suggest that you stop cluttering your writing with parentheticals. If it's worth saying at all then it's likely not actually a parenthetical. If it's not worth saying, then you should cull it. Yours seem to mostly fall in this latter category, in my assessment anyway Decide what you are trying to communicate and be sure that every word is in service to that message and that message alone. For example, you are discussing the practice of writing. That's why I'm in this thread, as a reader. In the middle of a sentence about finishing your novel, you mention via parenthetical that you're looking for an agent. Maybe the intent here was self-promotion -- you hope an agent or someone who knows one will read this -- fine. But if you can't decide and plan to use a parenthetical instead, know that the reader will be paying a dear cost: the sentence containing the parenthetical will be substantially more painful to read. Subsequent uses will be worse. By that second paragraph, you blew your parenthetical budget, and yet you went on to deploy three more. Parentheticals need to be vanishingly rare as they are an eyesore. Yes, if you'd like to die on that particular hill, you can use them with stylistic intent. Go for it. But for the reader it will probably grate.

vintagedave 1mo ago
You're right, and I appreciate the feedback. My fiction prose is different to my informal, quick comment-writing prose, FWIW.

pulkitsh1234 2mo ago

It's the same thing with Ted Talks, it has become a vanity metric.

PUSH_AX 2mo ago

All books are written, not all writing is for books.

groundzeros2015 2mo ago

> people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. Some of the best books are not from writers, but people who have something to say and writing happens to be a medium.

Detrytus 1mo ago
Well, if a person has a good story but can’t write, for example some civil rights activist, or war/catastrophe survivor, they will often use a ghostwriter to help with the actual writing.
- groundzeros2015 1mo ago
  That’s not what I’m referring to. Good writing is not limited to professional writers, and focus on the medium can often be a distraction from good ideas.

protocolture 2mo ago

Yeah I have had some variant of the conversation: >Help I need help worldbuilding to add <specific element>! >Me: Hey the authors in these 3 books do that pretty well. >Uh thanks but can you just tell me what works? Over and over again. I would actually be happier if these people kept their embarrassing lack of interest in reading between themselves and their LLM>

hammock 2mo ago

There is a book called “Reading Like A Writer” by Francine Prose that really helped me form a greater appreciation for reading and richness out of doing it.