To Be a Serious Writer, Become a Serious Reader
By Virginia Pye | June 11, 2024 |
In my last essay for Writer Unboxed, I made a case for not sharing early drafts. For ignoring other voices, especially critical ones, and blocking out the constant noise of everyday life to protect space for the imagination. I encouraged fellow writers, especially newer ones, to listen to the tentative, inchoate voice within. In this essay, I pitch another approach to the writing craft: reading. Finding one’s voice as an author can only happen when we unplug, turn off our phones, shut down our screens, and not just write, but read. Reading is my number one recommendation for how to improve as a writer.
In today’s cacophonous world the goal of sustained reading is harder to achieve than ever and, I would argue, more important. Before the pandemic and farther back, before constant iPhone use, I read fifty to sixty books a year, mostly novels. Post-pandemic, I can’t seem to finish thirty to forty. Those numbers might still sound large, but not if you consider that novel writing is my business. To write good novels, I need to read good novels, and sometimes bad ones. A key part of the practice of becoming a serious writer is to be a serious reader.
The reality of a waning attention span, though, looms over my, and perhaps your, literary life. Recent studies suggest the average undivided attention span for adults today has shrunk to just eight seconds. Eight seconds! Against a statistic like that, novels haven’t got a prayer. More and more people are listening to audio books as a cheat against distraction. You can drive, wash dishes, and walk the dog all while narration reaches some other part of the brain. Listening to a novel may require less concentration than reading a text, but I think still ‘counts’ as reading.
Still, there’s nothing as rewarding and engrossing as deep immersion in a book. It’s a complex experience that can be magical, taking a reader out of the present moment and their own body and into another world. Some people find listening to music transporting. Or watching a film. To my mind, those experiences don’t require the same meeting of imaginations that takes place between a reader and a writer.
But what does this have to do with crafting our own work? I’d say everything. As Margot Livesey has put it, we must “learn to read as a writer, to search out that hidden machinery, which it is the business of art to conceal and the business of the apprentice to comprehend.” As we absorb the written words of others, we not only learn about structure, character development, and all the other choices a writer must make, we also develop a crucial ear for language. So much of good writing is the shape and rhythm of sentences. By reading well-structured syntax, we internalize it and more easily make it our own. Familiarity with the vast array of written voices paradoxically offers a better chance to be innovative and original. How else to know what’s already been done so we don’t repeat it–or are at least aware when we do? In reading broadly, we position ourselves within the literary conversation that’s been carrying on for not just years, but generations.
So, what sorts of books should you read if you want to become a better writer? I’d say read in your genre. Read outside your genre. Read the classics, however you define them. Read experimental writing. Read poetry. Read dialect-driven work. Read in translation. Read zines and graphic novels. Read what you love and what you don’t yet love.
When in the midst of a project, some writers avoid books set in a similar place and time to their own story. Not me. For my latest book, set in Gilded Age Boston, I read novels from that era and novels set in that era. I immersed myself in Henry James and Edith Wharton, and more recent books, such as Katharine Howe’s The House of Velvet and Glass. Because my protagonist is a romance and adventure writer, and I knew I wanted my novel to play with romance tropes, I even watched Bridgerton and The Gilded Age, as well as reading romance novels from the 1800s. My goal was to see how this historical period has been portrayed and to learn the vocabulary—and the well-worn clichés—that my readers would bring to my story. By knowing the territory, I could borrow what was useful while forging my own way.
I would classify this type of reading as research. But I would recommend that the bulk of reading be unspecific and wide-ranging. I’m not part of a book group because I like following my own instincts when choosing a next book. One author may lead to a different author, or to another book by the same author. One subject may warrant reading several relevant books. To determine what to read next, I consult book reviews and listen to recommendations, especially from writer friends. There is some logic to how I choose the novels I read, but it’s intuitive and non-linear.
A top priority are well-crafted novels, where the language entices and seduces. The pleasure of reading beautifully honed sentences is gratifying in itself, separate from the story. I just finished How to Build a Boat, by the Irish writer Elaine Feeney. This 2023 Booker Prize longlist finalist moved me and offered valuable lessons. It shifts primarily between two main point-of-view characters—a mentally different teenage boy and his special ed teacher—each with their own arc leading them toward happiness. I admired Feeney’s deceptively simple sentences, so packed with specificity to create fully realized characters.
“Tess had indeed been planning her whole life, even as a kid how to get to school, how to make a lunch, where to buy a uniform, how to set alarms, to cook meals, to fill out forms, to have two keys at all times, to have some runaway money , to have emergency money, to water down the spirit bottles at home, to make excuses, to all of the excuses why friends wouldn’t come over, in the end it is easier not to make friends, to be guarded, to self-protect at all costs. To keep going, to keep going. She started crying hard now.”
And here’s an altogether different paragraph from the author Paul Bowles, whose elegant and dramatic 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, I return to from time to time to be reminded that setting can dictate the very language of a story—in this case, the hot, dusty, mysterious city of Fez shown in languorous, winding sentences.
“The street lights were very far apart now, and the streets had left off being paved. Still there were children in the gutters, playing with the garbage and screeching. A small stone suddenly hit him in the back. He wheeled about, but it was too dark to see where it had come from. A few seconds later another stone, coming from in front of him, landed against his knee. In the dim light he saw a group of small children scattering before him. More stones came from the other direction, this time without hitting him. When he got beyond, to a point where there was light, he stopped and tried to watch the two groups in battle, but they all ran off into the dark, and so he started up again, his gait as mechanical and rhythmical as before. A wind that was dry and warm, coming up the street out of the blackness before him, met him head on. He sniffed at the fragments of mystery in it, and again he felt as unaccustomed exaltation.”
I feel enriched by reading two such masterful, stylistically different writers and would love to write as well as they do. Saul Bellow describes a healthy envy when he says that “every writer is a reader moved to emulation.” The range of literary styles we encounter when we read widely helps our internal, writerly mind stay flexible and open to the possibilities of language. Words, sentences, and paragraphs are our raw materials. It’s important to be familiar with the many ways they can been used. There’s no end to the cleverness of past writers of all backgrounds, ever creating, ever reinvigorating language.
I’m curious to know what types of books you like to read as you write. Do you read in your genre or avoid it? Do you read stories that take place in the setting or time where your work is set? What stimulates not just your imagination but your writerly skills? What reading have you done that makes you a better writer?
Virginia Pye’s next novel, Marriage and Other Monuments, is forthcoming in February 2026. She’s the author of four books of fiction, essays, and short stories. Her most recent historical novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, was published in October 2023. Her collection, Shelf Life of Happiness won the 2019 IPPY Gold Medal for Short Fiction and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, River of Dust was an Indie Next Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix was named a Best Book of 2015.
Virginia’s essays have appeared in Literary Hub, The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Brain Child, and numerous literary magazines. She is Co-Fiction Editor of the literary journal Pangyrus, and a board member of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter. Virginia holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA with Highest Honors from Wesleyan University.
A Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar, Fellow at the Virginia Quarterly Review Conference, and a repeat Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, at Grub Street Writing Center’s Muse and Marketplace Conference in Boston. Please visit her at: virginia@virginiapye.com
During the pandemic I blissfully read about 65 books, and was reaching 50 or so prior. Now I’m down to about 20-30 a year. A friend reads 300 or more a year, which is insane to me! Part of why my reading has slowed down is because I’m more sleepy at night, my reading time. But a huge part is because I’ve become an active reader. I rarely am able to read a book anymore without underlining, highlighting, jotting notes in the margin, scribbling ideas. It takes a lot longer to read that way, but it’s better for writing. I read books in my genre or adjacent to, but also books far outside it, and they all provide inspiration.
Wow, that’s an impressive amount of reading that you do and I love that you respond to what you read so actively. I wonder how your friend does the 300 books a year? Not to be a skeptic, but you have to actually let the material sink in. Ha ha! But sounds like you’ve got a great practice going. Come to think of it, I wonder if we could start a trend of “Practing Reading,” much like having a practice in meditation. Maybe it could become the next cool thing! :)
Virginia, I agree with you–books have been my best and continuous teachers because I am absorbed. And since childhood I’ve had to suppress the desire to underline words and phrases that resonate, add my own thoughts in the margins, but I’m returning to that habit because it is a natural response. I read everything–from picture books to adult fiction and nonfiction, esp. biographies. Right now I’m bingeing on Anthony Doerr’s stories and I’m struck with his remarkable sentences. I would love to write with that level of attention to detail. Practice, practice…and speaking of, I have to go to recorder practice. Make some music! That too, inspires me. Thank you for your lovely essay.
Thanks so much, Vijaya! I’m so glad my essay resonated with you. And what a great practice to underline words and phrases and take notes. As you say, a natural response. Brava! And have fun with the recorder!
Excellent point, Virginia. I love the Bellow quote, and refer to it often. I also love what Annie Dillard once remarked, to the effect that one should be careful what one reads, for it will become what one writes.
Ah, a great Dillard quote. I was lucky enough to have her a my first writing teacher in college. Such gems of wisdom she tossed off! And she’s right. It is better to read well than to read absolutely everything, no matter the quality. I didn’t suggest that in my piece, but I think it’s true. But I wanted to strike a more democratic approach to reading because who knows, there’s no rule that fine writing can’t exist everywhere, right? Thanks again.
I like to give all types of books a chance, so I could read just about anything when I’m writing. What stimulates both my imagination and writing skills is listening to music on YouTube. For example, there are these channels called Audiomachine, Epic Heaven Music, and other artists who make their own music. It’s the sort of music who hear on movie trailers, there are also some videos titled “A Playlist For The Apocalypse”, and the music gives the story.
Interesting, Jill. Thanks for sharing those suggestions. I usually think of music as being distracting, but it sounds like you’ve found a way to make listening to it rewarding. Enjoy!
Virginia, I haven’t read The Sheltering Sky in years, but I remember the language being strikingly spare, but so flinty and vivid. I’ll have to re-read, thanks.
I hadn’t read it in years either, Tom, but picked it up again recently and was blown away again. So evocative! Flinty. What a perfect word! Happy reading!
First, I just want to say how unfair it is that your name is so great. From agents to shoppers, people are far more likely to pay attention to Virginia Pye than to, say, Ann Smortz. That said, I am inspired by your posts.
In the last few years my study of new (to me) books probably averages about four a year, and I’ll maybe revisit a couple I’ve already read because I know they’re good guides to organization or dialogue. I wonder if my difficulty getting traction with new work is directly connected with my lack of sustained reading time. Immersion. When I was a kid I had to have books literally pulled out of my hands before I could (or would) focus on whatever it was my parents wanted me to do. I’m sure they were not amused, and now I have become aware that the people I love need me to be present. I try to work (and/or read) in the hours before the television takes over the house.
Michael, thanks for liking my name. I guess it’s obvious I had nothing to do with it. And maybe you should consider serious earplugs and noise canceling headphones so you can still read when the TV is blaring? Just a thought. Lovely that you enjoyed reading so much as a kid. Nice memories, I bet.
I’m an incredibly slow reader. In a good year in the *before times*, I probably read 10-12 books a year, now- maybe 8? I hope it’s not that atrocious, but it might be. And yes, my attention span is waning- I have to actively cultivate it. So what I choose to pick up has to do a lot of work. It’s got to do all you talked about and more because I do need the enrichment of others’ words. I do need to read for enjoyment. I do need to read as writer… all that. I like to supplement my “on topic” reading with books written by BIPOC, or other marginalized writers in genres that help round out my work. Because of my kids, there’s more speculative fiction in my life, and I love how a good mystery or thriller makes me think about my own plot and pacing. But I’m also finding the 1 non-fiction I’m reading right now has me thinking about my characters and how three-dimensional or flat they feel.
I appreciate what you wrote because it feels very true, even though that scares me a bit. Maybe the fear is a challenge to write better.
Thanks for sharing your words with us.
Excellent point about reading a range of writers in terms of diversity, at whatever pace we can manage. Everyone is so busy and life is so distracting, it’s a miracle we have time to read at all. I wouldn’t beat myself up about it, but just press on and enjoy those books you do read. A great book is a goad to write better for us all! Many thanks for responding to my essay. Onward!
Totally agree about the importance of reading all kinds of things if one wants to be a writer and then improve the craft through the years. My belief is that a storyteller must be in love with story and the words that present said story or they will not be as good as they possibly could be at the craft.
Once had a writer acquaintance who said they never read fiction, ever, yet wrote genre fiction. To this day I marvel that they could do that.
I read in a variety of genres and mediums, from novels, to nonfiction, a bit of poetry, and sometimes a screenplay or stage play. Those latter not so much in recent years since I’m not involved in theatre any more.
Right now, I’m reading A World Full of Weeping by Keith McCarthy. I picked it up, thinking it would just be one of my “entertainment” reads, but I’m finding such great bits of description that are making me take pause and think I can do better in my WIP. And I think I am. :-) “How could something as ravenous, as destructive, as despicable as cancer mould something of pulchritude? It had no right to be a creator, a sculptor. Cancer was ugly, yet it had made of Helena a thing of fragile beauty.”
These are great points. Wonderful that you read so widely. Bizarre that someone can write without reading, but I know that’s a real problem these days, especially with students of writing. I have author friends who teach in colleges that specialize in creative writing for undergrads and the kids don’t read! Also, what an interesting quote. I’ll look for the book you mention. Many thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I’m getting deeper into the book I mentioned and it is uneven in the craft. Some parts are wonderful, then what characters do seems off at times. Rather odd approach to characterization.
Wonderful post. You are so right. Reading is essential to being a good writer. I read books in my genre even as I am writing. Not only do I learn things of value, reading relaxes me and gives me a break from the arduous nature of writing. I find it hard to be interested in books outside my genre (I write historical fiction), but I do go to other genres from time to time for the reasons you suggest, usually award-winning books so that I am constant touch with “good writing.” I do find reading stories set in the same era to be especially helpful. Besides reading, another thing that really stimulates my imagination is listening to podcasts relative to my topic. For me, that means listening to history podcasts. I listen while walking. Walking further helps to stimulate creativity. I am keeping notes in my head the entire time, sometimes even emailing myself a brilliant idea when I’m on the trail. Of course, I listen to a lot of writing podcasts, which are also very motivating.
Nancy, these all sound like really good practices. I listen to audiobooks while walking, but writing podcasts is a great idea, too! Being surrounded by a constant flood of words–by good writing, as you say–is so helpful. Thanks for responding to my essay!