How important is being well read for a writer

Question

Back in the mists of time, I would put a lot of time into reading, and would read pretty much anything I could lay my hands on.

Then I started writing, and it is very very rare that I read any fiction now.

Yet whenever I look at any forum, writing advice etc, it always suggests that you read lots.

The problem, for me, is that if I read a piece of writing that I particularly like, I will unconsciously allow the style, grammar, flow of that piece to seep into whatever I'm writing.

Being well read makes me more likely to write in facsimiles of other's and I'd rather create my own style

Is this something that other's tend to experience also?

So, how important is being well read, for a writer...

Edit to clarify

In all aspects of life I enjoy figuring problems out, without relying too much on what has gone before. Often I find I have reinvented the wheel, I enjoy exploring the reasoning behind a problem, and the nuances of why it is a problem in the first place.

To my mind, if I am struggling with some mechanism in a story, I could read other authors' work, and use their methods to solve the problem I've got, or I can explore the problem for myself and build my own mechanism to achieve the goal.

I am reasonably content in my approach to my own writing, and can't imagine that changing any time soon, but I saw another question and thought this would make an interesting question for anyone else who might have a similar approach.

Answer 1

I may have a very unpopular view on the subject but would say that I find myself more able to write in my preferred style by not reading a bunch of other people's work. I'd say that it's more important to be a good researcher, planner, and editor. The most important skills I practice to write at a level that I enjoy are:

1. Self Editing
2. Automatic Writing - this one is hard because it means I have to turn off the internal censor when I write but this is a practice in doing just that. This helps my words flow directly from thought to keyboard though, with little if any intervention.

To me, writing is about doing. The best way to get better is to keep doing it, and then reflect on your work at intervals while you create it, and after you've finished.

EDIT - I can't reasonably answer the part of your question about how important is it to be well read for an author because I'm not a known or paid author. I do write and other people enjoy what I write but I am not an author by vocation. 2nd - I prefer to write instead of read because, and in addition to the reasons stated above, reading takes time, and I don't always like what another author writes. So, I choose to spend the time writing - or researching for writing - instead of reading. -- my thanks to commenters noting that I had not specifically answered OPs question. I hope this does do with satisfaction.

Thanks for asking this question!

Answer 2

Congratulations on being a natural mimic! That is a marvelous skill to have as a fiction writer. Now all you have to do is learn how to leverage it. I'll give you a few clues here.

Unconscious mimicry is incredibly useful when your plot demands a dramatic diversion from your comfort zone. For example, you may be very skilled at high-speed, high-action fight scenes. You might have a gift for keeping your reader's heartrate accelerated and making the pages flash by. This is your natural style that you are trying so hard to defend. ...and you are absolutely right, it deserves to be defended because it makes your writing your own.

But stories aren't all action and adreneline. Eventually your characters need to do something else; maybe some dialog or an lurid love scene. Eventually, in your quest to write a complete story, you'll have to write some scenes that aren't in your comfort zone.

That is when being a mimic is a blessing. There are a lot of great writers out there, but each and every one of them is BEST at only one or two types of scenes. Start cataloging your favorite authors' strong points then use their writing to inject those skills into your writing at the moment when you need that kind of help. Eventually, you will have a library of earmarked books waiting to help you write every kind of scene imaginable. And because of your skill at mimicry, you can use that library to enrich everything that you write. Reading the right 5-10 pages from an expert in a particular type of scene, can elevate you into a master of that scene type as well. Mimicry! Embrace it!

That leaves you with one issue, the original issue from your question. Outside of the scenarios described above, how do you keep what you read from effecting what you write? The answer should come naturally to a mimic...

Right before you start writing, read 5-10 pages of what you have recently written. This will reset your mimicry, making you into a mimic of yourself. It will also serve to get you back into the mood and flow of your current writing, and remind you of plot elements which you might have forgotten since the last time you wrote.

Answer 3

Be well read in the genre in which you wish to write.

Every genre has its clichés. A writer could produce the best-written story imaginable and still have it rejected by editors and readers if they say, "oh, not that old chestnut again." Conversely, there is nothing wrong with building on the work of the greatest past authors in your chosen genre. Obviously by "building on" I do not mean plagiarism; I mean letting the virtues of the fiction that you have most liked reading be filtered and transformed by your own imagination into the fiction that you write. You say you are happy to reinvent the wheel - so why not invent a better wheel?

As an example, many, many authors have done "locked room" mysteries in detective fiction. If you haven't read much detective fiction then your locked room mystery is likely to be rejected as just another one in the same old style. But if you are familiar with the past of this sub-genre and manage to pull off a new twist on an old idea, then people will love it.

I, too, suffer from the style of what I have just read infecting what I write so that it can come across as a parody of the other author. The solution is not to stop reading but to put the "infected" piece of writing away for a while, then come back to it later when the passage of time lets you view it more objectively and re-write it.

Answer 4

You have already read a lot. Now is the time to write. Don't worry about forums full of virgins explaining sex to married men.

Answer 5

Whatever you write about, it must be interesting to you. Thus it depends on what you are writing about.

If you are writing about fiction, then reading fictional books can give you a greater understanding of how an author sets the scene, or motivates the reader to carry on.

As you describe you don't seem to read many fictional books, so therefore you show little interest. The author of a book must put good time and effort into writing, but more importantly it must be something they can stick too.

Whatever genre of book shows you interest, why don't you write about that.