Reading Is As Essential As Breathing

There is a saying that only the fool writes more than he reads, time has taught me that this is true. If you’re a writer, an aspiring writer or and avid reader but haven’t read Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing” - then I recommend you get onto it now. In this book Stephen gives three nuggets of advice for writers.

Writers should be writing every single day without exception.
Writers should be reading every single day without exception.
Read - Write - Eat - Sleep - Repeat.

I could bore you with quotes about the importance of reading and how we live thousands of lives in one if we simply open a book, yet recent research has noted that reading a novel or even a book is fast becoming a dying past-time.

We live in a time when we’ve more information at our fingertips than we’ve ever had before in history, and we’re reading more than we’ve ever done before, but we’re losing the gift of taking time to spend with a novel. While numbers visiting libraries has never been greater, it’s not the books which are bringing in the people.

Reading is part of my day. In my last blog I talked about my dedicated time to writing, but I also dedicate time to reading. About two hours every day. In the evening, usually between 8 - 9pm I end the working day with a book. I never switch the television on until 9pm and usually only for an hour.

The other hour per day is spent on my commute, thirty minutes each way, with the best app I have on my phone - Audible. I was introduced to audible by a friend and to be honest I thought I would hate having an actor read a book to me, but I absolutely love it. As a reader and a writer, I love to hear the drama behind the human voice in the story that is being told. Each week I get through a good book on Audible. As you can see my interests vary.