Start a Reading Plan to Improve Your Writing Skills

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Read!

One of my first blog entries was on how reading can improve your writing.

I wrote:

"Here's the best tip I can give you for becoming a better writer: read. Read widely, and read often. If you take the next month off from writing--don't write anything--and just spend it reading as much as you can, I assure you, when you resume writing, your prose will improve. You may not pick up any specific writing tips during your hiatus, but through regular reading, you will naturally begin to really get a feel for what smooth and effective writing is, provided of course, that you read quality material."

True writers are committed readers. Reading regularly from a young age has been the most critical factor in enabling me to write well enough to get published and paid on a regular basis.

Writing at romandock dot com, Nick says, "One of the biggest benefits of reading is that it can help improve your ability to write. It does this by helping you become more familiar with a larger variety of words (and thus increasing your vocabulary so you are not constantly repeating the same words) and also making you more accustomed to proper sentence structure. Another benefit of reading is that if you read a variety of material from a variety of authors, it will be easier for you to develop your own writing style and help you recognize different writing styles."

It Takes Effort

Knowing that a regular, disciplined reading plan (primarily good books) can significantly improve your writing skills is one thing; actually creating a plan and sticking to it is often a lot harder.

Joshua Sowin of Fire and Knowledge, writes on the Desiring God Blog, "We make time to watch television and surf the Internet for the latest triviality, but we can't seem to make the time to sit down and read for an hour."

It takes effort. As pastor and author John Piper says, "The ability to read does not come intuitively. It must be taught. And learning to read with understanding is a life-long labor."

Read books. Blogs, newspapers, magazines--they're fine (I read several blogs and magazines regularly) but books are ultimately better. Through reading a good book you can see how an author develops his arguments or stories over many more pages than in a blog post or magazine article; also, especially with the classics of literature, the quality of thought and elegance of writing is often much higher. Not always, but often.

There's also something more disciplined about sitting down or lying back with a book and reading it from beginning to end without distraction. When you're online, you can jump from link to link, blog to blog, site to site, and not have to deal with one compelling, in-depth argument or story. Same thing, to a lesser extent, with magazines. You can flip around from article to article, many of which are often completely unrelated. When you settle down with one book, your attention is necessarily bound to it alone--this can help you to develop more focus and discipline, attributes that also help you to become a better writer.

How to Stick to a Reading Plan

The simplest way to stick to a regular reading plan is to read books you enjoy. In the post I mentioned earlier, I also wrote:

"Don't get on your reading plan and start reading something you find really boring and try to plod on just for the exercise. It may backfire. Read authors or subjects that really excite you and your natural enthusiasm for what you're reading will enhance the experience so that you will retain what you've read."

Al Mohler, a theologian and radio show host, offers the following advice on developing and sticking to a reading plan, based on his experience:

"Maintain regular reading projects. I strategize my reading in six main categories: Theology, Biblical Studies, Church Life, History, Cultural Studies, and Literature. I have some project from each of these categories going at all times. I collect and gather books for each project, and read them over a determined period of time. This helps to discipline my reading, and also keeps me working across several disciplines....

Read all the titles written by some authors. Choose carefully here, but identify some authors whose books demand your attention. Read all they have written and watch their minds at work and their thought in development. No author can complete his thoughts in one book, no matter how large....

Allow yourself some fun reading, and learn how to enjoy reading by reading enjoyable books."

Do It.

My current reading plan is pretty simple. I'm always working my way through two books--a particular book from the Bible and another book that I find interesting. Each day, I try to read one chapter from whatever book in the Bible I'm going through (currently, it's the Psalms; previously, it was the Gospel of Matthew) and one chapter from my other chosen book (currently, it's Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity). A chapter a day from each book until each book is completed; then, I move on to the next book in the Bible (I alternate between the Old and New Testament) and the next book on my reading list (I've got about 15 lined up ready to go).

My only real rule for my reading plan is, again, reading things that interest me.

So, if you want to become a better writer, you should develop a regular, disciplined book reading plan. If you want to stick to that plan, you should pick books on subjects that you enjoy reading about.

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