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Is your writing more original if you read others less?
A few of my friends have said not reading others makes his or her writing more original. They’re not copying anyone so his or her work is original, yeah?
Bollocks.
Reading widely makes you a more original writer. Let’s start with what makes one a competent writer. Professional writers speak in a unified voice when they say you become a better writer by writing and reading more.
Stephen King in “On Writing” writes “if you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
Reading is a necessity. Yes you could be highly influenced by what you read, but this too is necessity. In the longterm, reading widely makes you more original. Reading a lot “offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.”
The idea of originality is tied to context. Something isn’t original unless it’s different from what’s been done before. You need to know what’s been done before, before you can be deviant.
Warren Ellis in “Do Anything: Thoughts on Comics and Things” describes collective creativity in terms of an ideascape, or where all creative thoughts live. He argues the more you hang out in this creative space, the more likely you can see what is left to be done.
It’s this “place where everything connects to the same central ocean. Where we all share the same strange air. Where unthinkable complexity becomes visible, speakable, drawable. Where we can see the paths through the jungle that others have trod, and can see where they’ve crossed, and can see what foliage has not yet been trailbroken.”
You’ve got to first explore to see what is left to be explored. You need to read widely if you expect your words to be original.
All artists are apprentices to those before them. Kirby Ferguson in “Everything is a Remix” quotes Henry Ford on the idea that inspiration is a culmination of all men’s work.
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
So, if you’re an aspiring writer and you think reading other works is going to make you less original, I can think of one way you could create a completely original work based on this logic.
If you’re still alive by that time, you’ll have a completely original story—well if there’s something about your kid’s cave painting that hasn’t been done before.
