Read versus Write

Sigh. Every apprentice writer knows that real life gets in the way of writing, or reading. Every apprentice writer has the conundrum of wondering which is the more important.

Two schools of thought: write every day and reading is research.

You won't get your book finished if you don't write at least every day; you need to work to some sort of schedule to get those words down on paper, whether it is really early in the morning or really late at night (I'm assuming the writer in question has school-aged kids). Outside of this, there is working life, there is family life, there is friends life; all of whom take up valuable writing time. Some days, it's going to be pure hell to even make one hundred words, other days you'll resent any interruptions, like sleep, food, housework, conversations. A lot of authors organise their time so when they're writing, no one interrupts on pain of... insert your favourite torture here.

Some days, it's simply not possible to write because you are simply exhausted. You don't need a guilt trip on top of that; the nagging little voice that tells you to put down a few paragraphs. Don't. They'll either be angry and crap, or weird and crap. It's up to you whether you'll finish the book this month, or next. Take your time to craft it.

On the other side is reading time. Any reading is research. Whether it's subconsciously recognising punctuation or grammar or a particular turn of phrase or information, it's all research and grist to your mill.

There is no guilt in reading. There is no either or with reading. It's not a sacrifice to read when your work-in-progress needs more words. Ideas, solutions, directions can be gleaned from reading. When you're tense about the writing, reading is relaxing passtime, not a waste of time.

But how do you find time for both? Many professional writers confess to not enjoying reading for pleasure as much as they did before being published, others confess to not having time; both are a tragedy. The former get caught up in the technicalities, the latter in their own projects. The consequences can be... difficult. While the first will improve their own writing, there's the risk of losing why they started writing in the first place: to write better books, to write what wasn't in the market. The second is a simple loss of ideas, or getting update on the current styles and what's selling.

Always, no matter how far you go in this industry, make time to read: what's new, what's old, what's popular, what's not, what's cutting edge, what's different, what's selling.

You can have the best of both worlds and what other job is there where reading every genre can be considered research?