Love to Read

Do you like to read? Do you like to write? Suzannah from Write It Sideways suggests that writers will write better if they are also readers.

Read the excerpt below. Contact suzannah@writeitsideways.com

to read the rest of the article.

1. Renew Your Love of Reading
Do you remember the first book you ever loved,
perhaps one that was read to you over and over again as a child? Or the first
book you read all by yourself? Or that love
story you read as a teenager that made you fall in love with falling
in love?
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really
happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that
happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the
ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather
was.” — Ernest Hemingway
I’m wiling to bet there isn’t a writer, dead or
alive, who hasn’t been transformed by reading. But when was the last time you
got lost in a wonderful story?
If you believe, as I do, that writers do half
the work and readers do the other half, then the act of reading is an act of writing.
Maybe we need a new word to describe this
phenomenon, but for right now, make a writerly commitment to enjoy reading on a
regular basis. Make a date with the library or that pile of books on your
nightstand, and rediscover the joy of reading.