How to Fall Back in Love with Reading
Four simple steps to reading more and being happier (you're welcome)
To write is to read. I’m sorry - that’s just true. If you want to write good fiction, you need to read good fiction. Mostly contemporary, and absolutely loads of it.
And this should feel like a perk of the job. An UNBELIEVABLE perk! The idea that you can justify carving time out of your week to sit around reading novels should feel like just the best thing ever - like a job that came with free wine and pizza every Friday lunchtime, or a daily nap break, or all the desks have integrated cheese toastie makers. But so often, it doesn’t. So often, we feel the obliagation to read as a grind, a guilt, a nag - something that we just don’t have time for.
My suggestion is a radical one. My suggestion is that you probably do have time to read, if you have any time at all to write (and, come to that, if you have the time to be reading this right now). My suggestion is that you don’t want to.
And honestly - that really is okay! This doesn’t make you a bad person. reading is morally neutral. But what you need is to fall back in love with reading. And I have a process for this.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Lucy’s Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.