Obviously any good writer needs to spend a lot of time reading. A bad book can sometime be more educational to a writer than a good book.

I'm a very busy person but recently have started taking a bus to work rather than driving as a) I can read on the bus and b) the bus takes longer. I've gone from reading a book once every few weeks to one a week (at least).

I spend very little time writing (I'm as busy as the next person - I work about 60 / 70 hours a week on top of other things). Sometime I think to myself as I'm reading that I should be writing.

I'm curious . . . how much of your time is spent reading and how much is spent writing? And by reading I mean the act of reading other people's novels, not reading over and editing your own work (that would of course be clased as writing).

Post your percentages - I'd say mine is 90% reading, 10% writing.

What do you think you should strive for as a balance? Obviously this is completely subjective and will vary from writer to writer but this could be an interesting dicussion.

Hi

I generally read in bed before going to sleep, and I definitely spend more time writing than I do reading, especially at the moment, so I'd say I was 70% writing 30% reading.

I'm not sure what the balance should be, but I try to read in line with what I'm writing, if that makes sense. Say I'm writing a fantasy story, but I start reading a sci-fi, it kind of throws me off. Right now I'm reading H.P Lovecraft for 'atmospherics', that kind of thing, feeding my inspiration.

JB

This is a fascinating question, Dr. Q, since I am still very much struggling to find a balance, myself. I didn't begin writing ficiton until the age of 41, and in that time read probably an averaghe of 2 novels a week since the age of 14.... In the first manic year of writing ficiton (2005) I completed three novels (writing) but only two (reading), though I dipped into many others and gave up after a chapter or two(somehting I had rarely done before).

I really want to reacquire my reading habit - Emma is always talking wisely of the need to refuel, and all logic tells me that I need to keep reading the work of people better than me in order to keep improving. I'm like young footballers who don't practice their essential balls skills because they are too knackered from having three matches a week.

I think I don't (by which I actually mean can't) read any more for a variety of reasons.
First: time. All the snatched minutes when I would have been reading, I am now writing, because to write novels on top of a full-time job and a young family is already a tall order.
Second: a weird kind of guilt. Reading (however much I know it's not the case) feels self-indulgent and uncreative: There is nothing to show for it - no words on a page - and that makes me feel guilty. (For this, I realise, I should just see a shrink).
Third: my newly acquired consciousness of technique means that I can no longer jusr relax and enjoy the story because I find myself thinking about the speech tags, or why the author put that chapter in that particular place.... (I never studied Eng Lit beyond A level so this dissecting appraoch is very new to me. Maybe it will wear off, or I'll get past it?)
Fourth - perhaps just a little - the subconscious fear that I will copy what I've just been reading (style, voice, whatever) when I next sit down to write.
Fourth - and this is the main one. The stories don't grip me. It's as if the space in my head for fiction is filled with my own charcaters and story, and so I find it desperately hard to get into another one. You know how, when you are in the middle of a book which has really fired your imagination, it is difficult to get into a different book - well, it's like that. I just find every litttle thing sparks off something which brings me back round to my own story and I'm thinking about that instead.

This has left me feeling... bereft. I am longing to be able to read properly again. At the moment I am having a self-imposed break from writing fiction (mainly to get some day-job work done, and for my general sanity) and I have been able to read a little.... but still not freely, as before. Even reading Harry Potter - though thoroughly immersed in the story - I was thinking about how the text was put together, half the time.

Anyway, sorry, I'm not really answering the question at all. Just curious about the answers. Thinking about what might be a 'normal' balance to aim at, for writers who want to read as well and have settled into a sustainable pattern.

Does anyone else experience these difficulties? New writers like me, or old hands who still find it a problem?

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(I also can't count past four!)

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In fact, oddly (and HP apart, because that was for me) the only thing I have consistently read in these three years has been kids' books. Because reading to my daughters is something which is sacrosanct. (The opposite of my weird guilt trip!) So I've read dozens of books for 7-11s and hardly any for adults. Makes it a bit embarrassing when people at work ask what you've read recently that's good and your only answer is Lion Boy or the latest Lemony Snickett.

I'm a book reviewer so I spend much time whizzing through stacks of review books, both for children and adults. I also read at bed-time and daytimes during August when I'm on hols from teaching, but have to be strict with myself to get the 1000 words a day writing done first. Sometimes I wish I could read books I've actually chosen for my own pure pleasure, but I know it's also a great honour to work as a reviewer.

Did sneakily buy a Margaret Forster yesterday and keep looking at it with longing...

I don't read fiction much when I'm writing, which seems to be a lot of the time: I have a complete ban on reading Raymond Chandler when I'm writing, though I adore him, because his style is so strongly-flavoured it's like last night's gorgeous garlic butter infecting in this morning's meusli.

I feel almost no compulsion to 'keep up' with new fiction, but I am looking forward to getting this novel off my desk and diving into Sarah Water's The Night Watch and Barry Unsworth's The Ruby in her Navel. Meanwhile I read non-fiction over lunch, in the bath, and all morning in bed at the weekends for hours, and even if I can squeeze twenty minutes before the school run, in the week. And I'm missing Middlemarch hugely, which has been illuminating my life for the last two weeks.

I know that my work's better when I have been reading lots, though not often directly. If there are obvious influences in my work it's more likely to be what I read as a child, and years ago: I went back to Le Carré recently to find out about tension and plotting. Reading now is more about fuelling me generally, and also (sounds a bit masochistic, this) thinning my skin. As someone with very well-developed defences against feeling anything very much and reading habits to match (Agatha Christie as anaesthetic), reading good things I've not read before restores my receptiveness to impressions and emotions as other art does, makes me alive and open and better fitted to carry that into my own writing.

Emma

I'm probably in line with all the above. I am pedantic about writing habits so I would say I write 80% read 20% of time available(pareto's 80/20 rule strikes again). I feel I should read to broaden my mind, and due to my obsession with writing I have learned to spead read like never before. I can read a novel in a week if I like it (before I started writing I would take 2/3 weeks per novel, not including summer hols etc).

However, Rosy raised a really interesting point. Since I have started being consumed by my novels I find I have the attention span of a gnat, and if I'm not 'grabbed' I move on, something I didn't do before. I am on first name terms at my local library (before, I would have bought the books I read, now, due to volume, I find myself taking 2/3 out of the library per week. I do find it hard to separate myself from the book in terms of wondering why the author structured it in such a way, or did such and such a thing, and in a way I don't get the same pleasure from reading as I am looking at the nuts and bolts. Maybe when my confidence grows that will change.

I would say you have to do the amount that is right for you - don't force yourself to sit in front of a PC - or pen and paper - and write if you just don't feel that's what you want to do at that particular time - at the moment for me the challenge is tearing myself away. I'm at work at the moment, and logging on here guiltily because I'm adicted to everything literary. Hubby thinks its a mid-life crisis.....

Until re-joining WW in the last month or so I wasn't really doing any writing so for me the balance was 100% - 0%!

I have to say I don't think I'll ever be able to kick the reading habit. Like JB I read almost exclusively at night in bed and it's often 2 or sometimes 4 hours at a time. I'm also quite a light sleeper and have got into the habit of not 'trying' to sleep when my brain says I can't so I'll often pick the book back up again at 4am, or 6am or whatever. Like RT104 I probably go through 2 or 3 novels a week.

The problem I have (and I know I'm not alone in this) is that I'm a terrible sponge. If I read a lot of a particular author my writing takes on their style and it's damn hard to shake off. I try to counter this by making sure I don't focus on any one author for too long but switch styles and genres.

If I ever get around to writing properly again I can't see myself stopping reading. Apart from anything else I won't have anything to do in bed (no comments now, please) which means I'll stay up writing which means I'll be there when the sun comes up and will be dead within 2 months

I guess the best option is to try and read non-fiction, especially if that non-fiction is perhaps helpful to the story in progress.

Jon

I read far too little nowadays, for reasons like Rosy's. 90% writing, 10 % reading.

I try to read every day but my main fear has always been that I would inadvertently put someone else's work into my own and so I have tended to steer clear of fiction for the last couple of years. That said I do read Kurt Vonnegut because, to be honest, I know I'll never write like him!
I would imagine, when I'm not on school holidays, that I am roughly 70% writing and 30% reading.

Apart from anything else I won't have anything to do in bed (no comments now, please)

What else is there to do???

Take care
Tracy

What else is there ot do in bed? WRITING, of course....! What are laptops for??

R x

Of course! How silly of me!!!
Take care
Tracy

I've just joined a different library due to our temporary move which has a really good selection - so have gone a little mad in the last week or two.

Picked 4 books for me last Thursday and added 5 to my daughter's pile and I think I've read 7 of them?

This is not typical but I'm feeling a little jaded by my own work at present so see it like a camel wading into an oasis.

Sarah

Dearest Sarah

Please don't feel too disheartened. I know it's a lot of work, but remember no one would have gone to all the trouble if they didn't think you were worth it. That should give you hope, not a headache!

Best

JB

the problem for me is when to stop doing both. I read in between writing sessions which is probably bad for my poor old eyes. So now I try to divide my days i spend at home with a balance of dog walking, reading, writing and cooking. This sometimes means that I have made the evening meal by ten in the morning but it seems to work. Sometimes I even end up doing the next days evening meal too....

I am supposed to be writing now, but somehow the replies on here all seem so much more fascinating than what I should be doing
Take care
Tracy