No excuses for being a day late this week. We’re just jumping straight in.

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”–Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

In his very excellent On Writing, Stephen King explained the importance of reading in any writer’s life. Mr. King himself claims to read about seventy to eighty books a year and yet considers himself “a slow reader.” I read about half of that in a year, although I’m hoping to up the ante by increasing my habit of listening to audiobooks in the car and over lunch when I’m by myself.

What’s important isn’t necessarily the sheer quantity of material read, but rather the quality. It’s imperative for aspiring writers to read good books to understand what works in a novel and bad books to understand what doesn’t. It can be hard to appreciate just how annoying clichés like “a face as red as a tomato” or “meanwhile, back at the ranch” are until you’ve actually read something that’s overflowing with such hackneyed phrases.

Apart from a desire to improve your writing, you should read because it’s just so gosh-darn fun to get absorbed in a great story, dazzled by a particular author’s flair for wordplay, and overwhelmed by the emotions conjured up by a masterful writer. In another great piece of advice from On Writing, King says, “You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” This is something that can’t be taught abstractly. It must be something that you have personally experienced, and that experience won’t come unless you pick up a book and start reading.

So shell out a few bucks at a bookstore, check out Overdrive.com for tons of free e-books and audiobooks, or simply visit your local library to start your journey as a reading writer.