It’s easy to find yourself left without enough time in the night to sit down and read for a bit, especially if you write. You have to hunt for topics, and research them. Then, for what actually works you have to sit down and actually write, edit, and create or find other media. Each of these steps can take a significant amount of time which eats into your time to do anything else. Some things have to be done, and some things keep finding themselves ranked below everything else.
I used to find myself wrapping up an article with the end of the night more often than not. Household chores knocked out, I though I could finally find time to write. I still lose myself in each syllable in each sentence. Hours can pass by if I have enough to write about. By the time I’m done, I don’t really want to read or do anything else. All I want is to keep being productive, but that supposed productivity has a price. I had to learn to read enough to keep writing.
Analysis: Critical Reading as Catalyst to Creative Writing
This productivity is chaotic the longer it runs. My thoughts become insular and ingrown. My mind wanders the same dead end ideas over and over like a record skipping and repeating itself. I am trapped in a loop. Like a plant whose branches grow into each other warping themselves, I am growing but not in the way I need to.
Reading shakes me awake and provides a clearer path towards new growth. Absorbing new ideas, new thoughts, new ways of phrasing things, I grow as a writer. The problem is, if I don’t sit down to analyze everything, I don’t know it. To stop improving is to plateau, to plateau is to stagnate, and to stagnate is to die. Reading provides a way forward when you’re stuck as a writer. Prune the paths to dead ends and allow yourself to grow.
Awareness: Balancing Input with Output
Reading creates a new injection of ideas and topics to consider. It allows your mind to focus on new growth in a direction which helps prune ingrowth and dead ends. It stirs the pot so the bottom doesn’t burn.
You don’t need to stir a pot every second it’s cooking (except for certain things). How much are you reading and how much should you read? How much are you writing and how much should you be? These questions don’t have a specific answer, but if you find the input drowning out what you want for output, you should adjust accordingly. How does reading affect your writing? Fit the technique to the recipe for your success.
Are you writing a lot or a little? Do you have enough to write enough or are you coming up short? Where do you get your ideas from? All of these affect how much you should read.
How do you get the most output with the least input, or, how do you know how much input is enough? Is there a cycle or is it constant? What gives you enough ideas while letting you thrive? If you like reading, keep reading, but if you need to write, find the right balance.
Growth: On the Shoulders of Giants
Reading can produce unique input which allows growth. If your goal is to write, your goal is also for someone to read. Who’s reading your work? Why?
If you write for yourself but you don’t read, who are you actually writing for? If you write for someone else, who else do they read and why? What other works might they stumble on and where are they going? Do you know or have you even looked?
Reading allows you to stand on the shoulders of giants until you are one. If you don’t make the trends, you have to follow them. Whose trend are you following and why? Where are they and where are they going? How much reading does it take to know? The sooner you can tell, the sooner you can look forward rather than just playing catch up.
Some fields require constant upkeep of knowledge, others are a bit more fixed. History isn’t really going to change all that much with the right evidence, but modern medicine will. Even if you’re working in a fixed field, you have to move on at some point. If you write about what you know in a given moment, you run out of material eventually.
Keep topping that material off and you can keep going. A bright fire burns out quicker than a dim fire, but both require materials to keep burning. If you use it a lot you need more, if you use less, you can go for longer. There isn’t a right amount except enough to keep you writing.
All the logs in the world won’t burn unless you help them. Listen more than need to speak, read more than you need to write, but don’t be silent. Let the outside world in so you can let your inner world out.