read outside of your genre

Don't read other authors

"'Don't read other authors while you're writing, or you'll end up sounding just like them.'  IF this were true, everyone would be reading Stephen King while writing their horror novels and we'd have oodles of people making 8 gazillion dollars because they sound a lot like Stephen King."

Reading helps writers find their own voice

"The claim some young writer makes each semester to me [is] that they don't want to read the writing of anyone else because it might damage their own creativity and squelch their voice.  Hard to believe, I realize, but I get myopic Kurt Vonnegut wannabes in my classes all the time. ... Reading helps [writers] find their own voice."

read outside of your comfort zone

"If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies—Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology.  Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."

Worlds of Wonder

Caution: Reading Can Be Hazardous

"Charles McGrath wrote in The New York Times about his experience of being a judge for the National Book Awards. ... He didn't entirely enjoy the task.  The title of his article was 'Caution: Reading Can Be Hazardous.'  Of the numerous volumes he had to read, he wrote, 'There were moments when I began to doubt the whole enterprise of fiction writing itself.  Does the world really need hundreds and hundreds of new novels or story collections every year, especially when so many of them are so similar?  Eventually, I had trouble keeping all the stories straight, and in my mind—and even in my dreams occasionally—the book overlapped, with couples failing to understand each other over and over again, and families endlessly dumping their woes onto the next generation.'  McGrath's frustration here would seem to be about subject matter.  Why always the oh-so-familiar psychology of couples and families?"