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Q&A How many books should writers read?

Quite honestly, if you do not read widely and voraciously, you have no business trying to be a writer. To do otherwise would be like a chef who only ate once a week and only at McDonald's. It would...

posted 8y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:52Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26289
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:00:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26289
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:00:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Quite honestly, if you do not read widely and voraciously, you have no business trying to be a writer. To do otherwise would be like a chef who only ate once a week and only at McDonald's. It would be like a actor who hardly went to the theater or a ball player who never went to a ball game.

And I do want to stress widely here. There seem to be many people who only every read in one narrow genre and expect to be able to write in that genre. I don't think that is going to work. You need a wider view in order to understand what writing is. And if you had the kind of love of stories and the kind of love of language that it takes to be a writer, you would never be content to confine your reading to a single genre.

Now as to the amount of preening erudition a post-modern author is expected to do to be accepted in the post-modern author's club, I can't really say. Probably a lot. Post modernism is a conceit, and I suppose that conceitedness is essential to produce it, but I suspect that if that conceit does not come naturally to you, it is probably impossible to fake it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-01-25T23:38:02Z (almost 8 years ago)
Original score: 5