Reading for Dummies
If you’re a writer, you’d better be a reader. They go hand in hand, no matter how you feel about it. You can’t put together halfway decent prose without a little bit of backlog in the old gray matter to pull from. And the ability to pick and choose your bits from what you’ve read to work is helpful.
This doesn’t of course mean only novels or sad poetry from suicidal Englishmen and women. Magazines, newspapers, blogs (wink, wink), even comic books are great. Reading is a task in and of itself. It molds the brain and makes you think.
Trying to find ways to make money through your writing means one thing. You’ll be reading much more than you’ll be writing. You should be. If you’re not, you’re not doing it right.
So what do you read? Like I said before, anything. However, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already reading a little bit of everything, so go read a good novel.
What? You’re still here? Oh yeah, a bit of advice. That’s what you’re looking for, eh? Alright. Ladies and Gentlemen, the greatest book ever written to make you feel as incredibly inadequate as a writer as is humanly possible: The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita is one of my favorite Russian novels ever written. The author is Mikhail Bulgakov, an unfortunate by product of the newly formed Stalinist Regime. You can read about him at Wikipedia if you’re really interested. The important part is his masterwork, this here novel. Basically it’s a political satire wrapped in a religiously heretical shell, wrapped in social comedy. Genius right? He retells the gospel of Christ’s death through the “novel” of his main character, or as some readers see, through Satan. Basically it’s amazing, and the important part; your brain starts churning. Slowly at first…hopefully quicker later on. Buy it. Borrow it. Find it somewhere. And then read it.
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