Would you take seriously the ambitions of a competitive swimmer who didn’t like to get in the water? Or a person who wanted to direct movies, but proudly stated they have only seen two movies in the last year? How about someone who wanted to be a great orchestral composer, but didn’t take the time to listen to music?

Yet in the last several months, I’ve run into an increasing number of aspiring fiction writers who didn’t read fiction for pleasure – who seemed proud of that, or felt it was a good thing for their writing. This boggles my mind.

Now, I’m not talking about people keeping dream journals, or writing only for themselves. I’m talking about people who want to write commercial fiction, believe they have a career ahead of them in doing so, and intend to get published in one way or another.

Here are some of the reasons they give as to why they don’t read books, and my answers.

- “I don’t have time. I work a full job, have family commitments and can’t find enough time to do everything I’m supposed to, plus writing – how can I read?” If you cannot find time to read, how are you planning to find time to write? Writing takes effort, time, mental space, commitment and dedication. I suspect you might be listening to the ‘easy money’ myth that writers don’t work hard, and there’s lots of money in it. That is just not the case.

- “I don’t want my work to be influenced by other writers’ styles.” Then you will run into two problems. One, you will be unknowingly using cliches and done to death ideas that other writers have already used. And two, your style will be unreadable, because you have failed to absorb and internalize the flow of different styles. A writer’s unique voice is made up of their experience with lots of different styles – the reader has chosen and discarded what fit into their own style, then added something different of their own. That’s how you build a unique writing style. You can’t do it in a vacuum.

- “I don’t enjoy reading, in fact it’s boring. I’d rather watch the movie. Anyway, I don’t have to read other people’s work – it’s MY writing I’m interested in, after all.” This sounds arrogant, and it is. Its underlying assumption is that people are going to want to read your stuff, and you aren’t going to have to learn anything to make that happen. I’m sorry, but that is very rarely true. Also, with an attitude like that, your work is probably going to be somewhat on the arrogant side as well, which may not appeal to a lot of readers who are not you.

- “Reading hurts my eyes, confuses my mind, and I find it hard to follow.” There’s a little bit of justice in this one, but unless you’re afflicted with a major disorder, it’s usually about practice. Reading is a skill, and it’s hard to do anything for pleasure, even walking, if you don’t do it enough to be reasonably skilled at it. Out of practice? Start with flash fiction, work up to short stories and novellas before you start reading novels. If you look at a novel and it just looks TOO LONG, if it looks like work, then try something shorter.

Here’s why I think reading a great deal isn’t just fun, isn’t just important, but is crucial to the careers of fiction writers. In very basic, toolbox terms, reading increases your vocabulary, improves your understanding of workaday spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph length, dialogue tags. But that’s not all!

Nonreaders are doomed to write stories that come across like bad copies of ideas better writers have already published, because the nonreader doesn’t know it’s out there already. The nonreader’s work is riddled with cliche.

Writing takes time, effort and commitment. If you can’t find the time in your life to read, then where are you going to find the time to write… especially since you’ve made it harder on yourself by not reading?

Reading the work of other writers gives you a chance to have your style influenced. That’s a good thing. You cannot find your unique voice in a chorus of silence; you must hear other voices and discover how yours is different. Reading good fiction and bad fiction gives you the groundwork, the place to stand, to understand fiction at all, and to make your fiction understandable to others.

The nonreader cannot resonate to the rhythms, the functions, the unspoken rules of fiction unless they have absorbed a great deal of it, through reading it, in the past. The output of a nonreader is going to come across as disjointed, confusing and badly structured to those who have spent their lives reading a lot of fiction.

And, if you don’t believe me, here’s a challenge. I dare you… I DOUBLE DARE YOU to find me a published how-to book about writing good fiction that tells you there’s no need to read the work of others. If you find one, put it in the comments. If there’s even one that doesn’t advise you to read, I will be very, very surprised.