📚 How to Use Reading as a Tool for Successful Writing
Reading has always been my hobby and passion, but it also helps me with all my writing.
One of my earliest childhood memories involves buying books with my mum. As an avid bookworm herself, she often took me to bookshops. One was an old rambling house with many different rooms and stairways. It was a fantasy world all of its own. On every available wall were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with second-hand books. My sister never read, so this was a time for us. We would spend hours wandering the rooms, choosing our next book.
Today we share books as much as we ever did. Books go back and forth, and we talk about them like friends.
This reading helped develop my love of words and made me a better writer. As I read, I now look at sentence structure, character development and many other factors. I analyse what makes a good read and what I can’t finish. This informs the writer in me.
If I see a word I don’t know, I look it up. I educate myself. When the time is right, I add it to my writing.
It is a valuable skill every writer should use. Not with novels and textbooks but with articles of interest. What makes you read a blog post to the end, and what makes you stop reading?
Use these insights as a reader to inform your writing. It is fair to say others will if you like a particular style and voice. So improve your writing by writing something you want to read. This is the essence of how you develop your writing skills.
Imagine the apocalypse, and you could save one book for everyone else. What would it be and why? Tell me in the chat - other people’s reading fascinates me.
As a fellow bookworm, I will leave you with this. My favourite quote from a book I read as a child and still read today.
> Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly — Inkheart Cornelia Funke
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Until next week stay safe
Sam 😊
Books I'm reading
They all love Jack - Bursting the Ripper by Bruce Robinson
Humans by Matt Haig
Inside Broadmoor by Johnathan Levi
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