Read a Lot, Write a Lot: Stephen King's Advice

drdandoyle

Sep 29

3 min read

By Dr Dan

Stephen King reduces the writing life to two habits. They sound simple, but they are demanding because they require steady attention over time: read a lot and write a lot. The advice is useful for beginners, experienced writers, and anyone who has ever wondered whether they have started too late.

The advice

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)

There is no complicated system hidden in that sentence. Reading gives a writer a wider sense of language, structure, voice, and possibility. Writing turns that knowledge into practice. One habit feeds the other.

What the two habits look like

Read actively, not anxiously. When a scene holds your attention, notice what the author has done. Look at the sentence length, the point of view, the order in which information arrives, and the moment the scene ends. You do not need to imitate every choice. You are learning to recognize choices.

Read outside your usual interests, too. A poem can sharpen your ear for rhythm. History can deepen a setting. A novel in another genre can show you a different way to create suspense or reveal character. The wider your reading, the more resources you bring to your own work.

Then write. A page does not have to be perfect to be useful. A paragraph, a scene, or a rough draft keeps your attention on the work rather than on the idea of being a writer. Revision becomes possible only after something exists on the page.

A practical challenge is to read for an hour and write 300 words. While reading, note one technique you would like to try and one choice that does not work for you. While writing, keep moving and save the editing for later. The point is not to produce a masterpiece in a day. It is to build a repeatable practice.

Why this advice matters to me

I did not come to language by an easy route. I have learning disabilities, yet I became an English teacher and later earned a Ph.D. in psychology. Those facts make King's advice feel practical rather than abstract: progress can come from returning to the work, one act of reading or writing at a time.

My stories and poems have appeared in The Southern Quill, The Milkbarn, Anaconda Magazine, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Egophobia, and The Winged Penny Review. Each publication represents the same basic process: read, write, revise, and keep going.

I have lived in New Zealand and now live in the Colorado Rockies. I am also a professional speaker and guitarist. Those parts of my life remind me that creative work can take more than one form, but all of it benefits from attention and repetition.

My novel, At the End of Hardship, is a Truman/MacArthur Korean War story. Writing a historical novel asks a writer to read deeply enough to make another time and place feel real. That is King's first rule serving the second: reading becomes material, and writing tests what you have learned.

Start where you are

You do not need a perfect schedule or a special identity to begin. Choose a book, read a few pages with attention, and put your own words on the page. Repeat tomorrow. Over time, reading will improve your judgment, and writing will give that judgment somewhere to go.