Reading Mindfully Beats Reading Extensively

And other unpopular opinions about the value of reading for a writer.

I’ll start this by saying that reading is good, reading is great. All writers love reading. I love reading.

I also want to address that this isn’t me saying “you can’t actually read 100 books a year” or anything like that. Read as much, or as little, as you want and in whatever format you prefer. I’m not here to be the reading police or to say “you should read like I do because it’s so much better”. I’m just giving out advice on how you could get more out of your reading to then implement it in your writing.

Now that’s out of the way, let me explain why I think reading widely and extensively can do very little for your writing skills unless you read mindfully.

When people talk about how important reading is for a writer, there’s a distinction to be made. The first argument that you’ll often hear is ‘read outside your genre’, which I also don’t argue. My point is that the way you’ll get more value out of reading is if you read as a writer, not a reader. As such, the mindset in which you open a book will trump reading a lot of them.

When it comes to honing your craft, there’s more value in reading fewer books with a writer’s mindset than in reading many with a reader’s mindset.

Reading Mindfully

Criticism of a book lies in a blend of subjective and objective factors. We could pick up a commercial novel and objectively say “prose isn’t that great”, and that doesn’t take away that it can be a five-star read. As a reader, we tend to rely on our subjective opinion of the novel without going too much into the ‘why’ or ‘how’. As a writer, we should strive to make an exercise out of evaluating exactly what works or doesn’t work in a story.

“It’s dragging,” I say as I reach 40% of the book. Then I go back, check the last chapter I was engaged in, and ask myself, “How would I fix this?”

“I hated it,” I say as I rate it one star. “But why would other people like it?” I take a step back, look at the fast-paced narrative, the couple’s banter, the tension. I’m not a fan of the execution, subjectively, but I can see why other people would enjoy it.

“I love their prose.” What is the writer doing that I love so much? Is it the word choice? The allegory? The way they leave things unsaid? The raw interiority?

A Writer’s Mindset

Reading is a hobby, but when you start writing, every time you open a book, it becomes a case study. Read because you enjoy it, but if you go into it solely for the immersive enjoyment—which is totally fine and valid—you’ll miss out on the value you can take away and implement in your craft.

I won’t lie, it can get exhausting to overanalyze every little thing you read, but once you train a critical eye, you’ll develop that same awareness for your own writing. It will become so easy to look at your draft and pick up what works and what doesn’t, because you’ve been doing that with so many other projects and authors.

My Approach

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I don’t read more than ten books a year. There’s an instant recoil and a questioning look, because how could I be any good at writing if I’m not reading that much?

• Point number one: I can’t draft while reading other books; it interferes with my voice, so that means I have to squeeze all my reading sessions together.

• Point number two: I’ve been reading since forever, every year. I never stopped, not when I was 8, or 15, or 23. I’ve read widely, extensively, and mindfully. I’ve tracked the market changes over the years and trained my mindset for 10 of those years. I used to read several books a month for years, but I’ve slowed down as other responsibilities piled up.

• Point number three: I’m not afraid to DNF, and I don’t count DNF books as read.

• Point number four: I don’t generally count my beta reading in my total count because I can’t recommend those titles to anyone.

• Point number six: I go into reading wanting and expecting a five-star read, which means I’m picky with my choices. I can only think of a few times when I finished a book out of spite to then rate it a one-star, and even with my all-time favorite books, I try to keep an objective opinion of them.

To expand on point number six, I LOVED Babel from R.F. Kuang. I think it’s great, and it made the translator in me so happy. I also think that it has a slow start, that the initial motivations and stakes aren’t that engaging because it’s quite character-driven, and the academic aspect is heavy. Those are all elements that I personally enjoyed, and someone else would abhor.

Then I’ve also read popular books that I had to ‘push through’ to finish them, but I wanted to make a case of why I didn’t like them, and above all, understand why so many others loved them. I’m very much of the opinion that you shouldn’t yuck on other people’s yum, and this is increasingly true when you pursue a career as a writer. It’s in poor taste to bash a fellow author’s books when they may become your industry coworkers.

Every book I love and hate teaches me something about the craft. With each read, I take away all that I want to improve on, and everything I’d rather avoid.

Other Unpopular Opinions

I also have the controversial opinion that the only way to get good at writing is by writing. Every book you write is going to teach you more than reading thousands of them. This is the conversation that I imagine a lot of editors and agents who don’t write often receive. Since their jobs consist of polishing a manuscript and evaluating its quality, surely they’d be amazing writers too.

I’m afraid not. Nothing compares to facing the blank page and hallucinating in real time. It’s like drawing: easy to picture in your mind until you grab the pencil, and your hand simply won’t comply.

As such, I’d say that you’ll learn more about writing after typing out a full-length novel than by reading a hundred books.

We could also talk about the value of going into debt for a master’s in Creative Writing, but I think that’s enough arguing with an invisible wall for today.