All of us writers, we say it all the time: the two best ways to become a good writer are (of course) to write, but also to read anything and everything you can get your hands on. I’m going to leave alone the writing part for now and I’m going to focusing on the ‘reading more’ bit.
It’s so hard isn’t it? It used to be easy. When I was twenty, I’d go to the library and get ten books, and read most of them in a week, often switching between two of them, at night before bed. I would read at work. I would read on the toilet. I would read at dinner. I’d read on the bus, in the car (I didn’t drive then), in the tub.
Then screens happened. Little computers in the palm of your hand that have all the information in the world! And all the books! But let’s admit it: we’re reading Twitter and TikTok about books rather than actually reading them. It’s so hard. Sometimes I find myself in bed at night, reading a book–a good book! An engaging book!–and my hand will creep over the coverlet to find my phone. The next thing I know, that tiny computer is back in my face and the books been thrown to the side like a piece of trash.
Well, I’m trying to change that in 2023, so here are my tips for reading (a little) more.
Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash
First: Don’t bring your phone in the bathroom with you. Seriously. Don’t say you don’t do it. We all know that’s a damn lie. Leave it in your purse or on the bed or in the kitchen. Now, put a book on the back of the toilet or a magazine with short stories or poems. There are lots of great short fic magazines that could use your support such as: Fantasy, Nightmare, F&SF, and Apex to name a few. Remember when we used to read on the toilet? Yes? Well, go back to doing that.
Second: Find that spot in the day where you tend to pick up your phone and stare at it. Maybe it’s on your lunch break. Maybe it’s when you get home from work, drop your keys and lay on the couch. Maybe it’s during your morning coffee. Now, put a book there. Put a book in the bag you take to lunch. Set one next to your coffee pot. Lay one on the coffee table next to that favorite chair. Whatever place you end up staring at your phone for thirty minutes at a stretch, put a book there. Now, pick up the book instead.
Third: Most importantly, the book before bed! I’m pretty sure all of us readers try to read before bed. It’s relaxing, it’s not a screen, it’s supposed to be good sleep hygiene. But as I said, that hand takes on a life of its own and goes sneaking over to the phone. The fix for that? When you walk into your room to get ready for bed, plug in your phone far away from you. Put it on the dresser. Plug it in on the bathroom counter. Put it wherever it needs to be that is far enough you won’t be tempted to rise out of bed to go ‘just check it.’ If anywhere in your bedroom is not far enough, order yourself an old school analog alarm clock from Amazon, and leave your phone charging in the kitchen when you go to bed.
This has honestly been the biggest help for me. I have been reading more since I started doing this, because I hate getting out of bed once I’m cozy. It has also had the neat side effect of improving my sleep because I’m not turning off the lights and then immediately picking up my phone to ‘check Twitter one last time’ for an hour before I go to sleep.
Fourth: A final tip for all of the above: if you don’t like it, don’t finish it. This one is hard, I know. A lot of us writers feel like we really have to give our fellow authors a fair shot, and we end up slogging through a book we aren’t enjoying because we feel we ought to. Well, you ought not to. Give the book a fair shot–read a quarter, thirty percent, one chapter–whatever amount you feel should have engaged you. If it hasn’t done that, put it down. Go find another book. If you don’t like that one, rinse and repeat. Keep going until you’re enjoying yourself. You’ll read a lot faster if you love it, I promise.
(And of the guilt ridden of us, remember, just because you’re not loving the book right now doesn’t mean you won’t love it later. You might just not be in the right ‘mood’ for that story or genre right now. And that’s okay. So if you feel really guilty about not finishing a book, tell yourself you’ll come back to it and put in back in your TBR pile.)
Welp, that’s it for this list. If you only do one of the things on this list, do number 3. It will benefit both the time you spend reading and your sleep habits. And if you end up staying up all night to read a really good book, I guarantee you’ll feel a lot less guilty about it than if you’d stayed up until one a.m scrolling the same Facebook posts over and over and over.
Until next time.
-JM