Be inspired by everything
Or: you don't need to read 50,000 books every year
Last week there was a bit of a fracas on Notes. By social media standards, having a bit of a tiff on Notes is a fairly gentle affair. While Twitter is arguing with Mecha Hitler and Bluesky is…doing whatever Bluesky is doing, a major scuffle on Notes is usually a back and forth about an obscure aspect of literature.
In this case, it was about how many books per year a writer should read. The focus rapidly became about the specific number (50 seemed to be the commonly cited threshold), rather than any kind of nuance. The implication was that to read fewer than 50 books meant you weren’t serious about writing.
The core point that most people were making, while mistakenly thinking they were arguing with each other, was that it’s important for writers to also be readers. That’s something I reckon we can all get behind, right? Putting a number on it, though, turning it into a KPI metric, adds no value.
These were clearly the best takes:
It was all very silly, and I don’t want to relitigate it here. That said, I found myself going down a couple of tangential rabbit holes.
So in no particular order…
How do you define ‘a book’?
For the record, and in my opinion: it doesn’t matter how many books you read each year. The number of books really, really doesn’t matter, so long as you’re reading.
On the basic logic end, trying to pinpoint a specific number of required books creates an arbitrary threshold. You don’t hit 50 books and suddenly become a serious writer. Doubling the amount, reading 100 books in a year, doesn’t make you extra-serious. At some point you’ll be reading so many books that you run out of time to write.
A big part of why it doesn’t make sense is that ‘a book’ is not a defined unit. It’s not a constant. You could theoretically put a minimum threshold on the number of films to watch per year, because films are more standardised in their run time. A film tends to come in at 2 hours: some are a bit shorter, some are a big longer. It takes the same exact amount of time to watch a movie for every member of the audience. You could easily calculate how many films you could squeeze into a given time period, if you were so inclined.1
Books, though, are amorphous things. While there are word count thresholds to separate ‘novella’ from ‘novel’, it’s all very loose. A book can range from tiny to gargantuan. Reading lots of short books is going to be easier than reading giant epics, evidently.
It’s actually quite interesting how this varies across art forms. Albums and songs can vary, but a song tends to sit around the 4 minute mark, and an album might be 45 minutes. A comic issue has a very regimented page count. Video games, however, can vary from an hour or two to literally hundreds of hours. The expectation of time from different forms varies massively.
Point is, ‘number of books’ is not a reliable measure.
Accessibility issues
My main concern during the discussion was that newer, less experienced writers might feel worried about what constitutes being a ‘serious writer’. Or, indeed, slower readers could feel somewhat ashamed. Not a nice place to be.
Rather overlooked in the debate was that everyone reads at a different pace. I’ve known people who are able to devour books at a pace I’ve never managed, even when I was a teenager with four books on the go simultaneously2. They can skim a page at lightning speed while still taking in the subtleties of the prose. It’s remarkable! I’m not like that. I tend to read slowly and linearly, taking in every word and sentence.
Reading ability is only part of it. This isn’t really a skill thing. I’ve had crummy eyes since I was a child, and now I’m in my 40s it’s all downhill. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart, etc. As my prescription intensifies, it’s a simple fact that reading is no longer an effortless activity. At night, it’s physically harder for me to read. There will be some of you reading this with even worse eyesight, I’m sure. Our capacity for reading books is reduced.
There are other factors. Attention spans vary from person-to-person, dependent on countless aspects from environment to day-to-day responsibilities to neurological.
All of this affects how many books we are able to read. If you get through 50 books each year, then that’s fantastic. Very pleased for you. If you don’t, that’s also fine, because it has nothing to do with how serious any of us are about our writing.
Correlation vs causality
There’s that phrase about mistaking correlation for causality. Just because something appears to be related to something else doesn’t mean that it is.
Many excellent writers read lots of books.
Reading lots of books will not automatically make you an excellent writer.
Both of these statements are true.
I’ve always thought that the main thing you need to do to improve as a writer is simply to write. Everything else is a multiplier, or an accelerant. Reading books will probably improve your writing, but not magically and in isolation. Studying at university or via a high quality online course will probably improve your writing at a faster rate than if you didn’t study, but only if you continue to write.
The only 100% vital activity that absolutely, positively cannot be avoided if you want to be a serious writer, is to write.
Analysis takes time
I studied Film & English at university, back in the mists of time. It was fun and even quite useful for my subsequent, rather meandering career.
My reading has never been the same. Not in a bad way, but the carefree, super-fast reading of my childhood was long gone. After my studies, I wasn’t able to read solely for pleasure and entertainment. Analysis of the text was hardcoded into me, and it resulted in a far slower reading speed. I had to rediscover my love of reading, which seems to be a common issue with arts graduates.
I can spend ten minutes reading and re-reading a single sentence. A page could take me twenty minutes. Not because I’m stuck, but because I’m poking at the structure and the way it’s put together.
Point is, I don’t have a consistent reading speed. My brain is split in half, between pure enjoyment and critical analysis. I think I’ve found a decent balance of the two. That slower, more methodical pace is what enables my reading to improve my writing. Learning from other writers isn’t only about enjoying their stories; it requires a forensic digging into their technique, and that can’t be rushed.
It’s not just about books
Something I find quite tedious is when a medium is obsessed with itself. Cinema, for example, is obsessed with cinema, often being very self-referential. Games iterate upon themselves over and over, rarely pulling in influences from, say, literature.
If someone loves something so much that they want to make their own creations, the risk, I think, is that their pool of references and knowledge is too shallow. Somebody adores superhero comics, so starts writing superhero comics. Someone loves action movies, so goes into directing action movies. It can become oddly insular and recursive, like everything is a photocopy of a photocopy.
Art gets really interesting when it’s pulling from a wider spectrum of inspiration. A movie that draws upon literature and art deco architecture and modernist paintings. A video game that looks to classic science fiction novels rather than other games. Novelists who don’t look down on other art forms. It’s cross-pollination that leads to the really exciting, innovative stuff that pushes everyone forward.
My point, I suppose, is to learn from everything, all the time. Read as many books as you can! Watch movies. Read comics. Play games. Go to art galleries. Listen to music. Study history. Go wide, and deep, and follow those weird rabbit holes to see where you pop out.
And then, after all that, don’t forget to leave time for some writing.
Don’t miss out on the free Sci-Fi and Fantasy giveaway that’s on this month There’s a Triverse ebook lurking in there somewhere…
Meanwhile.
I finally got round to watching Alex Garland’s Civil War film. I’ll write more about it over on Infinite Backlog at some point. It’s a fascinating piece of work, and continues Garland’s trend of being one of the most exciting people working in film and TV. I wonder how many parents have accidentally sat down to watch it with young kids, thinking it was Captain America: Civil War?
Talking of films, I’m off to see the new Superman in a couple of hours. It’s had a weirdly negative set of reviews in the UK (except for Kermode, who is always on point), while being rapturously received in the US. Looking forward to making up my own mind. On the subject, this is worth a read:
YouTube has been doing an interesting bit of lobbying/creator PR lately. Even if you don’t do video, it’s worth looking at if you’re at all involved in Creating Stuff:
Thanks for reading! See you later in the week.
Thumbnail Photo by Sirius Harrison on Unsplash
Note: Evidently, I’m not saying this would turn you into a serious filmmaker.
I had one for every room of the house. Yes, including the bathroom.