by Joyce Dunaway @DunawayJoyce

How much time do you read daily? As writers we feel we need to write every spare minute, but reading is also important to successful writing.

Stephen King says, “Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write.”

If you don’t have large blocks of reading time, you can work in snippets of reading—waiting in the school car line, waiting in the doctor’s office, or during commercials while watching TV.

Reading any genre is good, but it’s even more beneficial to read the genre you’re writing.

Following are some ways reading in your genre can help you achieve your dreams:

• Helps you learn the tone, style, rhythm, and components for your genre
• Shows you how early the main characters are introduced
• Reveals the relationship between main characters—love, hate, resentment, or jealousy
• If the main theme is a love story or mystery
• If a suspense novel, how soon the crime is portrayed
• When the criminal is revealed—at the beginning, middle, or end
• Teaches you the grammatical components of your genre—number of chapter and book pages, the combination of long and short sentences and paragraphs, the use of sentence fragments, and the balance between dialogue and action.
• How the conclusion resolves the mystery and relationship issues between characters

I would love to hear how reading in your genre has helped you or is helping you achieve your dreams. Please share your comments in the section below.