To Be a More Interesting Writer, Be a More Interesting Reader
As a writer, you should understand the importance of reading. It’s vital to your creative work that you read as much as possible. If you don’t believe that, then please do this: slap yourself in the head immediately because you need a lot more help than I can offer.
But let me quickly add one more neat argument from authority. This is a paraphrase of The Maestro himself, Stephen King, from On Writing: “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the tools to write.”
Here’s the larger point I want to make in this essay: If you only read whatever everyone else is reading, you’ll only think whatever everyone else is thinking. This, in turn, is severely limiting to your craft. Reading too little, or not at all, is death to the writer. But a reading life that’s restricted to a narrow range of popular work—what everyone else is also reading—is almost as bad. Almost.
The quality of your reading life contributes to two qualities in your writing:
1. How flat-out interesting your ideas are.
2. How generative you are as a writer: the quantity and range of thoughts you will be able to put to ink in a given week, month, or year.
It pays, then, to read a lot, to read widely, and to read well. (Also, as a quick disclaimer, I am mainly talking about reading books here!)
In short, it pays to be an interesting reader. How exactly do we accomplish this?
1. Detach from the hive mind
Although it’s trendy to bemoan social media, I do think there is a valid criticism here in how social media, when abused, can narrow the literary consumption habits of writers. One downside of the social internet is that it makes human thought more homogenous. Too many writers—especially the “excessively online writers”—are reading and talking about the same books, articles, think pieces, viral social media posts, and ideas, as their peers.
One rather unpleasant symptom of this homogeneity is a bunch of internet writers recycling the same concepts and ping-ponging them around, ad nauseam. Witness the many writers of self-help, business, wellness, culture, and politics who cannot help but re-use the cliches of “the current thing.” If I had a nickel for every time some internet writer regurgitated the word “gaslighting” to mean, “someone behaved unpleasantly to me,” I’d have literally 837 nickels. Do you think it’s weird that I count my annoyances like that? I don’t.
While the internet, in theory, could liberate our tastes and deliver us into a paradise of idiosyncrasy and variety, the human desire to be a part of the tribe and part of “the conversation” leads to a conformity and homogeneity of ideas. And this leads to trite writing.
As the wise say, the first step is to admit you have a problem. If you read, but your literary diet is mainly the popular ideas of your writing peers, then you are trapped in the hive. Let’s plan a little escape.
2. Be interesting. Lean into variance.
The simplest route out of the consumption hive is to lean into different types of variance. Let’s label them like so:
Temporal variance: books written in various times.
Geographic variance: books written by authors from various places.
Genre variance: books in various genres and about various topics.
Recommender variance: books recommended by various people.
If you can nail even a couple of these kinds of variance, your reading life is likely more interesting than most. Let’s explore each one just a little bit.
3. Temporal variance
It’s a semi-obvious observation that people who wrote a thousand years ago lived very different lives than ours and had different influences and experiences. Yes, in some meaningful sense, there is nothing new under the Sun, and human nature is human nature. But in another true sense, the literary output of Homer, Aristotle, and Emily Brontë will never be matched because no one will ever live their lives and occupy their milieu. And ditto, to a slightly lesser extent, for the writers of past decades, whether we are talking about Shirley Jackson or David Foster Wallace.
And so you can get a lot of reading variance by simply reading a mix of books from various periods. I try to include the following temporal mix in my reading diet:
Eternal classics that are 500+ years old.
Enduring classics that are 50+ years old
Contemporary books that are a decade to a few decades old.
New-ish books.
You might say, about the classics, “Hey, aren’t these so-called classic books, by definition, the books that everyone reads? How does reading classics make you more interesting?”
I think the answer to that is two-fold. First, many classic books have extreme depth. They are rich and will make your mind richer. Second, no one actually reads the classics. Oh, that’s an exaggeration. But not by much. How many people do you actually meet who have read, re-read, and thought about Shakespeare, Montaigne, and the Tao Te Ching? Sure, your lit major friend has read some Willy Shakes. Your woo-woo meditation friend has a dog-eared copy of the Tao. And your econ and history double-major nerd friend can quote Montaigne at will. But show me a writer who has deeply read all three, and yowza.
And there are so many classics that fly under the radar. I recently learned of a new translation of Pedro Páramo, one of the great Latin American books and a notoriously difficult read in English. I read it a long time ago in school, was thoroughly confused by it, and never picked it up again. I should read the new translation.
There are many deep, classic works like this that very few writers have read. Look at The Modern Library's Top 100 English-Language Classics. Yes, there are well-known classics that most writers have read: The Great Gatsby, Lord of The Flies, Ernest Hemingway’s books, and so on.
But look through the list, and how many have you read? Have you read Under The Net by Iris Murdoch? Do me a favor, and go to a big bookstore where writers hang out. Then start asking people, one by one, “Hello, excuse me my fine friend, but I’m conducting a little poll and wondering if you’ve read Under The Net by Iris Murdoch? Also, how about Pedro Páramo?” See how many people you must ask before you get a yes to both. I guarantee that the first person to qualify is an interesting reader.
4. Geographic variance
Have you read Bosnian authors? Mongolian authors? Montenegrin? Sri Lankan? What about North American authors from South Dakota or Hawaii or Guatemala?
What is true of the temporal milieu is also true of the geographic one: authors from different places will have different ideas, expressed in ways you will not expect. Reading them will make you a more interesting writer.
A little bit of geographic variance goes a long way, and it is not too difficult to add, to your yearly reading, just a few books from countries you don’t know that well.
5. Genre variance
Read books from a variety of genres and topics. It is way too easy to pick a favorite genre or two or three and stay there forever.
Many self-help writers and readers read a lot of nonfiction about how to be better people. Literary fiction readers and writers can easily get stuck reading only sad literary books about sad people with alcoholism. These readers can easily pretend that these are the only books that matter.
If you live for historical fiction, dip your toes into sci-fi and fantasy.
If poetry is your sweet spot, read a great history of World War I.
If you are a history buff, read a book about 20th-century physics.
The greatest books of a genre you don’t care about could blow you away. I don’t read a lot of, say, biographies of historically important figures and politicians, but I could stand to read a few of the best ones. Just a few.
If you hate sci-fi, fine. Hate it. But, for the love of God, just pick up a copy of an Ursula Le Guin Book once, and read Ted Chiang's first collection. Make the following rule: “I don’t have to like every genre, but I will read the single best book in any genre.”
You’ll be a much better writer for it.
There is something impressive about writers who traverse many genres in their reading diets.
6. Recommender variance
I saved the best for last. Your literary diet is the cornerstone of your writing brain’s nutrition. That is why book recommendations, from smart readers, are so important for your writing.
A beautiful way to lean into variance is to seek out widely varying recommenders.
Consider my feminist pal who can recite Margaret Atwood’s complete bibliography and my lifting buddy who bow-hunts, does jiu-jitsu, and prefers books by ex-NAVY Seals. I should ask both of them, “What are the best books you’ve read in the past five years?” Then I should probably read what they say.
I enjoy seeking the book recommendations of smart and idiosyncratic people like the economist and culture vulture Tyler Cowen. Here’s his personal list of the best fiction in recent times. That it contains both Liu Cixin and J.M. Coetzee makes it an interesting list. Seek out recommenders, and lists, like this.
7. A little bit of variance goes a long way
In case it needs saying, there is nothing wrong with popular books. Some popular books are very good and deserve to be popular. It’s not rational to be a knee-jerk anti-conformist who only consumes esoteric books out of some point of personal pride. Nothing I have said here is about totally rejecting popular or new books, and I read lots of them myself.
Instead, I made the case for feeding your mind a more varied diet. Lean into variance and give yourself a range of novel ideas. It will make for a more fertile playground for your writing.
Whether you read 10 books this year or 100, I’m sure you can inject a little bit more variance than usual. Your writing brain will thank you!