Greetings, cherished Odyssey readers!

My say-so this week, contrary to what my other Odyssey writings have thus far have been about, is not centered around the latest gaming craze or released DLC. While we’re on the subject, this won’t gravitate around my brother or family either, no offense to them.

This one’s about me. Actually, and more importantly, it’s about reading and writing.

First thing is first: Writing is so many things to me. It’s my release, my escape. It has been my lifelong more-than-a-hobby; it’s my centralized passion and I have more complicated feelings about it than I can possibly begin to type out. Sure, I’ve had fiction published online and in a book, but I need to believe those are only the beginning. I have to.

However, one thing I can type out is how I’ve been a less-than-perfect reader. In the name of true candor, allow me to say that I’ve sucked the big one at reading lately.

And, by lately, I regrettably mean years. It’s no small shame of mine, but it’s one I’ve come to terms with and have tried on and off, very very on and off, to hone and improve upon.

Now I’m sure many other wordsmiths have fallen short by the way of reading as well, but whether for them this was to a small or large extent is not and will never be my place to determine. This is about me, and I can’t group myself with others, or better yet others’ faults, to deflect the blame from my own. You have to own it.

I’ve sucked hardcore as a reader, like Stallone-and-Schwarzenegger-and-Statham-on-a-mechanized-Tyrannosaurus level of hardcore, and thus my writing has suffered. This must change.

And if any of you find yourself in similar positions, hear me out.

I know I’m not any all-knowing, all-powerful, wise-monk-on-top-of-a-mountaintop pinnacle of preaching and knowledge when it comes to this. I can stink up a good page loudly and not-so-proudly. My writer’s shortcomings could fill a list three miles long, and this isn’t only because I’m my own hardest critic. It’s because it’s the truth, and the first thing anyone in the same shoes can do is come to grips with it.

Or, worded more truthfully, come to grips with it and act on it, rather than laze around in non-reading apathy and still endeavor to write better. It unfortunately doesn’t work like that.

But what blows is that I do love reading, and I bet many of you do too. It’s just a mess of mine I need to remedy. So for anyone who can relate, here’s one of the best, if not The Best of the Best, ways in which all this can be worded, composed by none other than the one and only Stephen King in his book On Writing.

The passage reads thusly:

“You may find yourself adopting a style you find particularly exciting, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When I read Ray Bradbury as a kid, I wrote like Ray Bradbury—everything green and wondrous and seen through a lens smeared with the grease of nostalgia. When I read James M. Cain, everything I wrote came out clipped and stripped and hard-boiled. When I read Lovecraft, my prose became luxurious and Byzantine. I wrote stories in my teenage years where all these styles merged, creating a kind of hilarious stew. This sort of stylistic blending is a necessary part of developing one’s own style, but it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on the subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

Similarly, another hearty chunk of advice I’ve received was from writer and renowned professor Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. His book juxtaposes eye-opening views on both science and story and reading and being human so well, and I actually ended up having the chance to communicate with him via email one night while I was still a student at Illinois State University. The paraphrased gist of the most memorable message he sent during our chatting was essentially this: “Write more… Read even more… Pay your dues and honor the grind until your ‘sucking’ becomes succeeding.”

Both King and Gottschall couldn’t be more right.

To boot, I even, at a young age when my first poem was published in my town’s local literary magazine, received an honest-to-goodness response from Dean Koontz, another one-and-only master writer. I’d sent him the poem in the mail and there, right under the obligatory, very formal and polite letter typed out by whom I have to assume is/was his editor, agent, etcetera, was an awesome boost of confidence from him for my younger self, advice which mirrors everything else I’ve learned.

So, here’s the juicy recapping meat at the end of this on-reading, on-writing shish-ka-bobbly whatever this has been:

If you’re a reader, a good reader, excellent. Keep on trucking.

If you’re a writer too, read more than you write. (Or, at the very least, try your hardest to abide.) These are down-the-road morals I myself am still far from proficient at tangling with, but I’ll do my darndest to take my own medicine from now on.

Finally, if you’re at all interested, despite coming from someone who has just done plenty of self-describing as sucky, here are some of favorite stories/books:

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On Writing (Duh.)

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Also ‘Duh.’)

Fight Club

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Odd Thomas

All The King’s Men

To Kill A Mockingbird

Catcher in the Rye

Egghead, or You Can’t Survive on Ideas Alone

The Sound of Thunder

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

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The list goes on, but this is swell for now. And the ultimate kicker is, this needs to expand, as I hope your lists do too.

So thank you, in all senses, for reading.