The Most Overlooked Fix for Writer’s Block
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life” — Stephen King
“To read, or not to read” — that isn’t the question. Because to write is to read.
When I see people on the internet ask: “hey guys, how do you get over writer’s block? I need some help!” I always skim through the comments (trust me, I too need all the help I can get). “Take a walk,” “meditate,” “listen to some music or go for a jog!” While certainly helpful, this advice is starting to wax cliché. And, without fail, every time I get through the eager answers I hardly see anyone mention the simplest one: reading.
For me, reading is the blood that gives life to the written body. Without that blood, you’re left with a heavy and useless corpse. Good writing—the stuff that makes you feel the grass, see the night’s starry silver, the purple smell of lilac bloom—comes from a cup overspilled with reading. For me, there seems to be no other way.
So, after combing through the many posts on writer’s block, let me share 3 reasons reading will (at the very least) help you push through.
1) Reading is Input
Contemporary studies on secondary language learning state that receiving input—that is, the language itself in a meaningful context—is the single best way to learn. For example, it’s one thing to see the word bailar on a vocabulary list, and it’s another to go to a discoteca, have a nice looking man or woman come up to you and say “quieres bailar conmigo?” The situation forms a memory that grafts the word (the input) into your mind beyond mere repetition from a list with no context.
The same goes with writing. Reading is the input that allows you to respond to that man or woman at the discoteca (metaphorically speaking): sí, claro que me gustaría bailar contigo. As you could not respond in Spanish with words you don’t have, you also can’t write without precursory reading. When that idea for something you want to write forms a small seed in your mind, you have to water it to let it grow—that water is reading.
So, if your writing languishes in a draught, let it rain. And, at the same time, ensure that your water is pure. You must verify that your reading input is clean, free from harmful substances and chemicals. Turn off Twitter, turn off the internet, turn off the TV and sit with a good book. Whatever you want to write (fiction, non-fiction, self-help, etc.), read from the best and read purposefully. Drink from the pages. Let the seed soak deep into the ground and grow into the oak tree you want it to be. Your literary heroes will never leave you wanting.
2) Reading is Output
The reverse is also true—the more you read, the more likely you are to write, and to write well. When I read fiction, the kind that really draws me in, I always get ideas for news stories or different ways I might approach a story I’m currently working on. Clean reading spills out into my writing and makes it rich. When I’m stumped on a story, I always go back to my literary heroes and see what they did. Without fail, they are there to speak with me and help me along the way. Their voices allow me to produce when my pen waxes dry, as did the voices before them.
I often think of any written (or creative, for that matter) endeavor as going to a metaphorical river. The content we use in our writing comes from the river, but gets filtered through us. When we like someone’s writing, it’s because we like the way the content flows through them, not necessarily the content itself. After all, aren’t there only seven or so stories ever to tell? How many books on habits could the world possibly produce, until we get Atomic Habits by James Clear and we realize we needed another? Do we really need another Malcom Gladwell, Oliver Sacks, Joyce Carol Oates, David McCullough? Yes! There are many people throughout the world who will benefit from hearing what you have to say because of the way you will say it. And as you read, your personal voice gets the polishing it needs to ring clear across the internet and the world.
3) Reading is Intellect
One of my most treasured literary heroes, Jorge Luis Borges, said the following: “I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves… Reading… is an activity subsequent to writing—more resigned, more civil, more intellectual” (3).
While I will never reach Borges’s level of readership (would take multiple lifetimes), and have yet to write as much as he did, I find that reading certainly is an act of intellect. More intellectual? Well, I’ll have to see. But what I do know is that in reading we fill our minds with the thoughts and observations of those before, standing on the shoulders of giants. In reading we become writers, “great authors” ourselves. In the chess match of reading and writing, the author opens with white and must win in plain sight. And the only way to accomplish this is to play the role of reader ad infinitum.
Read, and read some more. And while you may find that you’ll never read enough, reading will help you break through any blocks. Reading breaks the physical restrictions of space-time and opens windows of life and opportunity previously closed. Actually, when you read, time no longer exists. Reading brings you into the present of the past’s greatest thinkers. And the more time you spend with them, the better. Both you in your inescapably empty present and your readers, in the future, will thank you.
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