The Writer as Reader January 10, 2019 A very happy 2019 to everyone! New years bring New Year's resolutions, and one of mine is to read more books. I got an early start and over the holidays finished both Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Anderson was one of my always-meant-to-read-someday books, and it had been so many years since I'd read "Fahrenheit 451" that I'd forgotten much of the plot. I felt like I was reconnecting with an old friend after a long time apart. I not only enjoyed both books, I learned a lot from them. "Winesburg" deals mostly with the interior lives of the inhabitants of a small Ohio town, and in reading it I realized that it's possible to write a compelling narrative in which not a lot physically happens. In Bradbury, I came to see how a master writer uses beautiful metaphors and descriptions to hold and move the reader. At about this point in my blog posts, I usually say something about how I found this or that "useful" and add that you might want to try it in your own writing life. But reading, and reading classics--both inside and outside your field--are so central to learning to be a good writer that this is one of the few times I'll say you must do something. If you wish to be a writer, you must also be a reader. The careful reading of classics is, in my opinion, even more important than reading "how to write" books. Classics provide everything from inspiration to skeleton plots for your own work to examples of the successful use of just about every writing technique that exists. So read, read a lot, and read the classics. Use those waste moments in line at the bank or before the movie not to scroll through your phone, but to get another page, another paragraph, another line through your eyes and into your mind. You'll be a better writer for it, I guarantee. (c) 2019 by Andrew Gudgel email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com