"If you don't have time to read, you won't have time or tools to write," writes Stephen King in his memoir. He goes on to explain writers must read widely and frequently to develop their own voice and to learn how to write sentences and structure stories in ways that make readers want to pick up their work and read it.
This idea that we must be readers first in order to be writers is echoed throughout books on writing and is often the first piece of advice that authors offer to aspiring novelists." The more we read, the faster we can perform that magic trick of seeing how the letters have been combined into words that have meaning," writes best-selling author Francine Prose in Reading Like a Writer.
According to a recent University of Florida study of 48 MBA students, what students read in college directly affects the level of writing they achieve. In the study, researchers surveyed students about their reading materials and habits, and they also took a writing sample from their cover letters. Researchers then ran those samples—as well as samples from news stories the participants had read—through programs to assess the writings' complexity.
Upon analyzing their findings, researchers concluded that students who read academic journals and literary fiction scored higher in measures of writing complexity than those who primarily read popular fiction or web contents published on sites like BuzzFeed, Reddit and The Huffington Post.
Research has found that deep reading is distinctive from other types of reading in which we merely read text superficially. The language found in literary fiction, for example, is complex and rich in detail and metaphor. And the brain handles this language by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brain regions that would be active if you were experiencing the event in real life.
Regardless of what science may say about how reading affects writing though, writers themselves tend to agree that you can't be a successful writer unless you are first a voracious (求知欲强的) reader. By reading, writers not only accumulate knowledge, but they also gain a better understanding of language, learn their genre(风格), grow their vocabulary and most importantly, find inspiration.
Perhaps that's why when the late writer and Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago was asked about his daily writing routine, he said," I write two pages. And then I read and read and read."
