Why to Read and how to Read?

Creative Writers’ Edition

There are a few things that can be advised in a single breath: water for good skin, eight hours of sleep for no stress and reading for better writing.

Reading and writing are like distant cousins. An attentive reader who pays attention to close details can learn a lot about the craft of writing. They understand writing structures better and the different storytelling techniques of various authors. Also since as a reader they’re aware of what they enjoy and what doesn’t work for them, they are careful to not repeat the anomalies as writers. They become more perceptive and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that conscious readers make better writers.

In this blog, we will first try to understand the “why” behind reading more and try to streamline our purpose. And also we will look at a few reading habits which can be useful for us if we want to explore the genre of creative fiction.

Why to engage in reading more?

Reading is acknowledgement of and inspiration for our own stories

The world out there is crowded with stories and we might know only 5% of it. Reading more enables us to know and understand the gradient of stories available. This helps us to acknowledge events and emotions from our own lives as worthy of being told. An incident that we might have considered to be monochromatic can be the plot of our first story/novel and more.

Stepping stone to a better creative expression

With everything that we read, we encounter new words, new expressions and most importantly how to express certain incidents. For example, I never knew how to express the Hindi word “karvatein” in English. However, as I read more, I encountered “n” number of ways to express it: “tossing and turning in bed”, “changing sides”, “a restless sleep”, “my anxiety couldn’t endure a peaceful sleep” and this is just one of the many examples. In a nutshell, we can conclude that reading gives a boost to our creative expression.

Reading can help us find our own voice

If writing is time, then your voice is how you spend that time. So, if writing is expression then voice is how you express. The question “how” becomes very important while we define our voice. Now, voice is something personal but at the same it is a by-product of our experiences. So, as we read more, we engage with different genres and are exposed to different writing styles. When we experiment more, our choices for influence multiply. And we can selectively pick what works best for us when it comes to the “how” of our expression.

Now that we have understood why the practice of reading more can be a virtue for writers, let’s try to know a few reading habits that can make reading a lot more interesting and help us reap the benefits better.

Do books communicate? Let’s read and find out!

Reading habits that can help us a lot in understanding and writing fiction!

1. We can try to inculcate a habit of underlining the important sections of anything that we read. Either we can highlight the sections that we feel have been best expressed or maybe write those lines in a small notepad for future references.
2. We might have often read a book just to finish it. But we need to remember that reading is not an isolated activity. More often than not, the author includes references which might be personal/specific to a time period/related to a particular event, movement etc. For example, when we read “The Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens or “Hard Times” or any novel by a Russian writer (Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy and more), the plot makes more sense if we are aware about the French Revolution, the movement of Realism and the history of the Victorian society. And that is why, research is very important.
3. More often than not, we tend to sit down with a dictionary while we read. This is a habit that we can consciously try to avoid because we’re reading a book and not attending a vocabulary class. We should try to understand the words in the context of which they’re used in the book and maybe mark them and learn them at a later time. This will also help us to retain better.
4. This may sound whimsical but forming personal connections with books or with anything that we read can help us a lot. We can place our favorite bookmark in that favorite part of our favorite book, or place a flower in our favorite book and make all sorts of whimsical gestures. We can take a book everywhere we go and read it wherever we can. This makes reading pleasurable, exciting and personal. The Frenchmen, in particular, love reading and that passion is reflected in their exceptional literary oeuvre. Les français aiment leur littérature. Nous pouvons apprendre d’eux. (Trans: The French love their literature, we can learn from them.)
5. As fancy as it may sound but creating a conducive ambience can also help us to read more. We can sit in the sun, go to a library, play our favorite song or make a cup of tea to go with it, anything that makes us feel at ease and help us to concentrate more while reading.
6. We can experiment with authors and genres as well because sticking to a specific author and genre can make our thought process quite linear.
7. English teachers interpreting colors might be a popular troll content but honestly, it can be a very useful exercise. Trying to understand the different possible meanings of a particular situation will help us cultivate a critical eye and a metaphorical language to enrich our creative expression even more.
8. We should never worship the author. They’re not perfect and we shouldn’t be blindfolded by their fame. If we disagree with them, we can write down our arguments and maybe develop them even further. Who knows, we might be able to write an entire retelling to the master-book like “The Palace of Illusions”, “Jaya” and more. Or maybe adapt these plots and write it with a different approach like Shakespeare does with ancient Greek tales: “Romeo & Juliet” is based on the story of “Pyramus and Thisbe” from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis”.
9. Whenever we start any book, we can try to avoid the hurry to finish it. Instead, we should spend time with our books, never be in a hurry to finish a book. “50 books in 12 months” shouldn’t be the target, in fact it is fine to finish 10 books in 12 months until we are learning something out of our reading experience. It is quite redundant if we forget what we have read as soon as we finish.
10. Whenever it is feasible, we can try to discuss what we’ve read with others. This can be an extremely helpful exercise to enhance our understanding and widen our knowledge about a particular book. Not always do many cooks spoil the broth!

Paperian Shibani talks about reading and how it is helpful for writers.

But reading is not everything rosy

Reading can be pretty addictive once we get going or get hooked to it. It has its own charm. However, there can be a kind of a red flag here. It is quite a pleasurable activity and it opens a window to literature that is readily available for us to read and enjoy. In such situations, we might get carried away and hog onto it greedily without producing much personal work. It is a thin line but we should be careful not to tread upon it. We need to balance both reading and writing so that one doesn’t eat up time from the other. Another thing that can be bothersome with reading more is that we might tend to get overwhelmed. We might start questioning our geniuses and deem our work to be not good enough. Then we must all remember that every writer on a prestigious shelf at a famous bookstore was a reader who also believed in her/his idea.

At times we might feel that we don’t have any new story to narrate because everything else has already been said before. But this is a very wrong assumption. As already stated in the beginning, the world is filled with stories so we will definitely find our “big break”. Moreover, we are a race who shares similar emotions. So, no story can be narrated enough!

So, if you’ve books added to your wish lists, this is the time to move them to to-do lists. You know why to read, how to read, the do-s and the don’t-s, so grab your book and enjoy reading.

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