RTW: Read to Succeed

From YA Highway:

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question to write about on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This week's topic:  About how many books do you read in a year? Do you want to read more? Or less?

At various stages of life, I've recorded lists of books I've read in journals and notebooks.  Now Goodreads makes it so easy to keep track of what I've read and what I'd like to read, and I LOVE to see what others are reading, too, especially other writerly types.

I read between 50 and 75 books a year, I'd guess, mainly YA in recent years.  That's a pretty comfortable number for me.  Between work and parenting and writing and volunteering and watching football, I don't think I'd be able to do much more than that.  

But here's the deal: I must read.  As much as possible. Reading makes me a better writer.  Here's what I read:

• Really, really great fiction - Mind-blowing, awesome stuff
• Really awful fiction  (what not to do....)
• In-between fiction
• Serious literature
• Fluff
• Short stories
• Non-fiction
• Poetry
• Plays
• Picture books, chapter books, etc - Out loud to my kids
• Blogs, online newspapers, magazines, etc 
• Books about writing - even if you think you don't need them, you do
• Manuscripts - as a critique partner and a beta reader 

All of these things offer lessons in craft and language and a million other things.  I read as a writer.  I can't help it.  

I believe that if I want to be successful as a writer, I've got to read as much as I possibly can.

 This postcard came in the mail from the Loft Literary Center several years ago and I taped it up at my desk.  Best advice ever.


How many books do you read each year?

Monday, 6:30 am