Striking a Balance Between Reading and Writing

What I learned from a week of no reading

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Every Sunday, I work at an independent bookstore. Most recently, after I had processed and shelved several used books, I sat down and read the first 50 pages of one of them.

This was the first time I had read in a week.

My choice to refrain from reading was prompted by The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a twelve-week course-in-a-book that guides the reader on “a spiritual path to higher creativity”. I’ve read it before and found it helpful for overcoming barriers to my writing.

The previous Sunday, as I read Week 4 (“Recovering a Sense of Integrity”), I paused when I read one of the tasks: Reading Deprivation Week. I had forgotten about this! Knowing now what was coming, I finished two books I was close to completing.

Cameron invites the reader to take a break from inputs so you can unlock outputs.

“It’s a paradox that, by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well. Without distractions, we are once again thrust into the sensory world.”

This book was written in 1992. The concepts are timeless, but what counts as reading has expanded since then. That meant also taking a break from:

• social media

• newsletters and articles

• external information in general

I made an exception with email, checking and responding as needed, but limited my interaction.

What did I learn? Here are some insights from my one-week experience without reading.¹

#1 - We are what we read; we become what we write.

If I wanted to quickly know who a person is, I’d ask them to show me their book shelves. We read what we are and who we want to become.

This is a good thing, especially in schools. As Richard Allington notes, "successful adult readers read themselves into becoming readers.” Our identities and our reading are entwined, as our reading shapes who we become as literate, reflective people.

To fully become our unique selves, however, we have to express our emotions, our beliefs and values, and see how they resonate in the world. This is where writing (and many of the arts) comes in. Poetry, narrative, persuasive, and informative all serve difference functions, and not just for the audience. Writing is a way to take all that we know, and both shape and reveal who we are.

“The pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self. They are a trail that we follow into our own interior, where we meet both our own creativity and our creator.”

— Julia Cameron

I’m a coach and a professional learning provider. I took content from other books on the subject that I found useful and integrated it into an outline for upcoming PD.

#2 - Reading can be a block for writers.

Not too far into my reading deprivation, I could feel myself getting an itch to consume. In response, I made a list of all the things I could do besides read.

After having my fill of chores and activities, I could still feel that void where reading once was. The itch became an uncomfortable experience, as Julia Cameron predicted.

“Reading deprivation is a very powerful tool and a very frightening one. Even thinking about it can bring up enormous rage. For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own.”

I eventually surrendered, began to write an article, and felt better afterward. I also thought about what will happen once my reading deprivation week was over. I don’t agree with Cameron that reading is “an addiction”, but I can see it supplanting writing as an avoidance strategy.

Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush offer what seems to be a good rule of thumb:

“Time spent reading should never exceed time spent writing.”

A question for you: How might this rule look in schools?

#3 - Reading influences our writing, and not always positively.

My writing tends to lean toward the technical over the expressive. It’s probably a reflection of the amount and type of nonfiction that I read. That’s why I monitor my reading diet through Goodreads; I can quickly see my balance of fiction vs. nonfiction, and within more specific genres.

Maybe more importantly, what I read influences what I write. I pick up the rules of the language tacitly through the authors I choose to read. This internalization can push back on my own voice, what makes me different from other writers. Julia Cameron refers to this as “our Censor”.

“Logic brain is our Censor, our second (and third and fourth) thoughts. Faced with an original sentence, phrase, paint squiggle, it says, ‘What the hell is that? That's not right!’”

As I write, I try to pay attention to when the Censor rears its ugly head. For example, I originally had the title for that article I started as “The Joy and Sorrow of Letting Go” (for my agency’s newsletter). After I typed it out, I thought “joy and sorrow” sounded too cheesy and sentimental. Not long after my reading deprivation week, I came across an article with “joy and sorrow” in the title. If I had been curious instead of doubtful, I may have stayed with my original language.

#4 - Writing needs more time and attention in schools.

Reading is the main event in schools, often at the expense of writing. I think part of this comes from the perception that reading is easy to measure, at least from a phonics-first approach.

Conversely, writing presents as more of a process and involves the inherent messiness of creativity. Case in point: this very article was left to wallow in my drafts folder for a while as I struggled to shepherd it to the finish line. Many writing pieces I begin never see publication. Writing needs the time and the attention required to explore our ideas (and ourselves). This process makes it a difficult fit within a literacy block overstuffed with reading activities.

Julia Cameron sees this phenomenon carry into adulthood’s artistic endeavors.

“Fixated on the need to have something to show for our labors, we often deny our curiosities. Every time we do this, we are blocked.”

We therefore shouldn’t be surprised when so many former students fail to identify as writers. They were never given the space or support to become one.

To close this post out, here are some suggestions for striking a better balance between reading and writing in classrooms:

1. Use reading as a bridge to writing. Keep it simple, such as book reviews and shared writing connected to a read aloud for easy starting points.

2. Bring back independent writing time. Make it low stakes, such as freewriting in the mornings or quick writes during ELA lessons. Use these drafts as seeds for future pieces.

3. Talk publicly about your reading and writing life. Share what you are currently reading with students and how it influences what you write. Be vulnerable.

4. Speak with colleagues and your principal about your concerns around the lack of writing happening schoolwide. You don’t have to offer a solution, just a forum.

1. I obviously don’t want to make reading the enemy here. The real problem is all of the reading activities - workbooks, isolated skill practice, teaching that goes on and on - that take up too much of the literacy block. Reduce these activities, and time opens up.