Andrew Welsh-Huggins
It’s one of the most frequently asked questions of writers, right after, “Where do you get your ideas?”:
“What are you reading? Who are your favorite authors?”
Not far behind this query is another, more complicated one that’s often puzzled me: “Do you read while you write?” That is, do you stop reading as you craft a work in progress to avoid unconsciously adopting the voice of other writers?
For me, the answer has always been a resounding “no”: I’m a reader first, writer second. Stuck on a desert island with a choice between a library and a laptop? No brainer: bring on the books.
For the most part, that sentiment is universal. I crowd-sourced this question—read while writing?—on two different online forums populated by mystery writers. It’s safe to say that author and Kings River Life publisher Lorie Lewis Ham captured the overall reaction with her response: “If I didn’t read while writing, I would never read.”
Still, variations on this theme emerged, from writers who read in different genres than their works-in-progress, to those who need a break from inhabiting a fictional world, to those exhausted by eye strain after a day on the computer. “My reading waxes and wanes. At times, I’m devouring books, etc.,” said essayist and fiction writer Paula Messina. “Occasionally, I find it challenging to keep reading. This always passes, and I begin reading a lot again.”
When considering the issue at hand, almost everyone is familiar with Stephen King’s take on the question: “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” Or William Faulkner’s declaration to, “Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
Other well-known authors acknowledge different preferences. “Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments,” novelist Zadie Smith told Literary Hub. “Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those.”
Michael Connelly, author of the best-selling Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller novels, confesses to reading very little crime fiction today. “Now that I write these, it’s hard for me to escape into crime fiction because I see the writer back there and what they’re doing,” he said during a recent Gramercy Books appearance in Columbus. “At a time in my life, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, and that’s why I do it. Now I read less and less of it—I read more nonfiction than crime fiction.”
The late fantasy novelist Terry Goodkind acknowledged his dyslexia prevented him from reading a lot of novels, but that wasn’t the only reason. “I’m writing 15 hours a day, seven days a week, so I don’t have time to read other material,” he said in a 2007 interview. “Also, I don’t read other novels because I don’t like to be distracted by how other authors do things.”
Going further back in time, Michael Meyer, a biographer of playwright Henrik Ibsen, noted that for the last half of Ibsen’s life, he “read little but newspapers and the Bible.”
Now back to those variations on a theme. Much of what crime fiction writer and editor Michael Bracken reads is unpublished work (such as magazine and anthology submissions), which provides an unexpected benefit. “Though it’s unlikely I would ever absorb someone else’s voice, I do recognize problems in others’ writing and become better able to recognize them in my own writing,” Bracken said.
Writer and editor Jeffrey Marks is always reading, but not in the genre he’s working on. “So if I’m editing a biography (as I am now), I can read fiction, but not biography,” said Marks, who is also Crippen & Landru’s publisher. “If I’m writing a cozy, then it’s perhaps true crime or noir for me.”
Some writers acknowledge they set books aside when they’re in the throes of the creative process. “When I’m in the really hard and heavy part of editing, I don’t read much beyond the daily check-in on news websites I have to do for my day job,” said Kathleen Marple Kalb, author of contemporary and historical cozy mysteries. Instead, she treats herself to “guilty pleasure” TV like original Law & Order episodes.
Writer and blogger Kevin Tipple also takes a break, but during the writing phase. “As one who has had reading other stuff most definitely leak into my own writing, I tend to avoid reading while in the middle of actively working on a story,” said Tipple, editor of Kevin’s Corner. “Once I am in the editing phase, I can once again read.”
In the end, most writers who commented on the question said that—regardless of their reading habits—consuming other writers’ works is part of their ongoing education.
“I think writers learn how to put words on the page by reading words on the page,” said Tracy Clark, award-winning Chicago mystery writer of the Harriet Foster and Cass Raines series.
“We read the greats, the masters, and we become inspired. We read our contemporaries and we marvel at their talent and creativity,” Clark said. “These influences, at least for me, inspire me to tell my own stories, to give voice to my voice in my own unique way.”
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Andrew Welsh-Huggins writes from Columbus, Ohio, where he is the Shamus, Derringer, and ITW-award-nominated author of the standalone thriller The End of the Road and the Andy Hayes Private Eye series, about a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned investigator. Publishers Weekly said of Welsh-Huggins’ new thriller, The Mailman: “With full-throttle pacing from start to finish, this will have Jack Reacher fans hoping Carter is back in action soon.” The editor of Columbus Noir, Welsh-Huggins has also published multiple stories in magazines and anthologies and been featured in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 and 2024.
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