Read Well If You Would Write Well

Writers must read good writing to learn to write well. That is the conclusion of all the great writers: Saul Bellows, Jorge Borges, Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg and many more.

Wendell Berry said it well in a letter he wrote to my creative writings students.

The first obligation of a writer is to tell the truth--or to come as near to telling it as is
humanly possible. To do that, it is necessary to learn to write well. And to learn to write well, it is necessary to learn to read well. Reading will make you a better writer, provided you will read ever more attentively and critically. You will probably read a lot of contemporary writing in your textbooks, in magazines and newspapers, in popular novels, etc. The contemporary is inescapable. You may more easily escape the writing that is most necessary to you. I mean the books we know as 'classics,' books that have been read for generations or for centuries and so have proved their excellence.

As you learn to judge what you read, you will learn also to judge, and so improve, what you write. Reading, I think, is half of your responsibility as students of writing. The other half of your responsibility, of course, is to write, and your effort to write well, as I hope you already know, will make you better readers.

Read the entire letter here.