Why writers must read with purpose

Each week, Evan Peterson rounds up stories from across the Web that scribes of all stripes should check out. It’s arguable that reading is more important to writers than to anyone else. You can’t write well if you don’t read well, and there’s a right and a wrong way to read, according to one writer. Also, a victory for clickbait and the importance of writing about yourself.

Read actively: Reading is about as important to writing as listening is to learning a new language: it helps us know the rules, structure and it gives us an example to work toward. But not all reading is the same, writes Tim Parks in The New York Review of Books. One method involves passively taking in what the writer presents, about which Parks writes this:

But if writers are to entice us into their vision, let us make them work for it. Let us resist enchantment for a while, or at least for long enough to have some idea of what we are being drawn into. For the mindless, passive acceptance of other people’s representations of the world can only enchain us and hamper our personal growth, hamper the possibility of positive action.