Why Writers Must Keep Reading

You ever get that blown away feeling after finishing a book? That astonished, awed, book-hangover feeling?

You know what that is, right? When you read a book so amazing, so fantastic, that you’re left numb and paralysed and like you can’t quite go on with your life. When a book has reached into your soul and yanked out your heart and fiddled with all your insides until nothing seems to quite make sense anymore. When the ending of a book leaves you bereft and lonely and grieving yet filled with gratitude beyond all emotion that you got to experience it at all.

Yeah. It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?

I think the last book to get me there was Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. Have you read it? I’ve read other books by Doerr, and while I enjoyed them, none of them quite captured me in the same way as this one.

Like all books that truly blow me away, I don’t quite know how to explain it. It’s literary fiction, so the rhythm and lilt of the words is perfect (and I do love a bit of well-composed prose). It’s a story that captures emotion and has a clear moral point and allows the reader to connect on so many levels. It’s science fiction and historical fiction and thriller and drama all rolled into one. And beneath all that, it’s good entertainment, as simple as that.

But as I’m sitting here, chewing on this hangover and wondering how any book can ever live up to Doerr’s tome of wonderfulness, I keep circling back to two thoughts:

• Just how important reading is if you want to be the best writer you can be.

• No matter how wonderful you think your book is, some people will get that hangover, and others will hate it.

If you’re serious about writing, here’s why books like this are more than entertainment:

1. Reading Opens Up the World

When you read widely, you soak up different styles and voices. You start to understand how authors build tension, create believable yet snappy dialogue, or craft descriptions that feel like they’re brushing across your skin. Every book you read adds a tool to your kit, ready to be picked up when you need it.

2. Reading Teaches You Storytelling Mechanics

Plot twists that make you gasp, characters that feel like your friends (or enemies), endings that linger long after the final page… these aren’t accidents. In great books, they’re carefully crafted, and when we read, we absorb these techniques almost by osmosis.

3. Reading Expands Your Vocabulary and Craft

Words are a writer’s paintbrush, and the more you read, the more colours you have to paint with. You learn how to play with words and rhythm and meaning simply by seeing it done well (or, indeed, badly).

4. Reading Fuels Creativity

I often talk about the imagination muscle and how important it is to exercise it. Reading counts as imagination exercise! All those moments in a book that you love, the ones that set you alight inside or have you screaming at the pages in utter emotional rage - they are fuel for your creativity. They set your imagination ablaze and make you want to try something just as powerful in your own writing.

5. Reading Helps You Understand Your Market

If you dream of publishing, you need to know what readers love (and what makes them throw a book across the room). Reading in your genre teaches you the tropes and expectations, while reading outside it teaches you how to surprise your readers in the best ways.

And here’s the one big thing that everyone seems to forget: even a book that gives you a life-changing hangover will have one-star reviews. Cloud Cuckoo Land has them. People hated the very book that left me unable to breathe. Every big book in history has them.

So don’t let fear of opinion stop you from writing. Your words won’t be for everyone, but somewhere out there, maybe now, maybe years from now, someone will be sitting on the edge of their bed, heart pounding, unable to quite believe what a rollercoaster your book has put them through.

Keep reading. Keep writing. You’ve got this.