Natural differences in talent notwithstanding
I would say that you are likely to be
exactly as good a writer as you are a reader.
As far as I know, certainly in my own case
everybody who becomes a writer
has got there through reading.
Even as a child, you will read some narrative
some story that particularly seizes your imagination
that transports you to a different place.
You get the habit of reading.
You'll be reading under the bedclothes by torchlight.
And sooner or later, you will think
"Well, actually, I can write in the English language
perhaps I could write some story like this."
In fact, you could very easily say
that reading is the gateway drug for writing.
That, of course, begs the question, "How to read?"
Now, if you are hoping to become a writer
or if you are a writer
that will change your reading experience
possibly forever, in a number of ways.
In some ways, perhaps it won't be as satisfying
because you will never be able to completely immerse yourself
in a story or a piece of text in the way that you once did.
Because you will have part of your mind
continually looking at the text to try and find out
how the writer achieved their effects.
So, while that can be a little bit distancing
there are compensations.
Because once you understand
how the writer is achieving their effects
once you understand all of the thinking and the ingenuity
that has gone into this story
it will be perhaps be a much, much richer experience for you.
Now, that is how to read.
To read with an analytical eye.
To back-engineer your own responses.
If you're reading a book and you suddenly find yourself
frightened or touched or amused
look back over the preceding pages or paragraphs
and see how the writer has got you to feel that.
This is one of the joys
of being a writer that reads.
You can find out an awful lot about human responses
from your own human responses and kind of back-engineer it
to find out how they got that response.
You will also have to decide what to read.
And I would suggest
that you be as omnivorous as possible.
To read everything.
Don't differentiate between the highest pinnacles of literature
and the lowest slums of pulp and genre.
Everything is potentially powerful
and will enrich you as a writer.
Yeah, read philosophical treatises
and also read Viz.
Read the lowest things and the highest things
and all points between.
They can only expand your grasp of your subject and your career.
An interesting thing from... regarding what to read
from my own experience
was that when I was a much younger and more beautiful man
when I was around 23
I was attempting to do a fanzine.
Which I always enjoyed fanzine publishing
and small press publishing.
It was a great thing that used to be around in my younger days
and which greatly helped my transition
into becoming a professional writer.
But this fanzine that I was attempting
I had written to my enormous hero
then and now
the non-musician Brian Eno.
I had sent him a list of questions.
And, astonishingly, he wrote back!
And my response to this enormous generosity
was to fail to publish the magazine
because I was too young and disorganised
and to feel enormously guilty for the remainder of my life
about not having published
this brilliant interview by Brian Eno.
One of the things that he answered in this questionnaire
was I'd asked him what he was reading at the moment.
And he gave me a list of his current books
that he'd got on his night table.
He also said that
he had a technique that expanded his reading list, interestingly.
He said... And this relates to...
I don't know how many of you young people
out there will remember these
but we used to have something called libraries.
And those libraries had a classification system
that was called the Dewey Decimal System.
It'd be a little string of digits at the base of the spine
that would tell you what category the book was in
and all the details about it.
What Brian Eno would do is to write down random numbers
and then go into the library
and seeing what book those numbers referred to
and then taking it out and reading it.
So, it was fields that he would never have looked at
and he was finding out about them.
Now, that sounds to me like a wonderful method
of improving the range of your input
and finding that all of these things
are within your grasp and that they are all things
that you can use at some point.
Now, it's not only important
to read books about all sorts of subjects.
As a prospective writer, I would urge you
to not only read good books
read terrible books as well
because they can be more inspiring than the good books.
If you're inspired by a good book
there is always the danger of plagiarism
of doing something that is too much like that good book.
Whereas a genuinely helpful reaction
to a piece of work that you're reading is...
"Jesus Christ, I could write this shit."
That is immensely liberating.
To find somebody who is published
who is doing much, much worse than you.
And by analysing why they are doing so badly
this will immensely help your own style.
You will find out all of the mistakes not to make.
"Why did this story offend me so much?"
Yeah, analyse that, find out why you didn't like it.
Find out all of the examples of clumsiness or bad thinking
that spoiled the story for you.
That will probably be a lot more helpful
to your career as a writer.