Writers read in at least seven ways:
- Regularly — They beg, borrow, and steal time to read. They love waiting for their doctor's appointment, standing in line at the bank, commuting on trains and buses, and finding themselves suddenly alone, because they use those moments as opportunities to read.
- Plentifully — Writers can sit still for hours and days getting caught up in narrative turns, poetic leaps, and dramatic flairs of the essays, fiction, poems, or scripts they are reading. They see these long stretches as writing-training sessions.
- Expertly — Writers read with a depth that enables them reach the level of expertise of specialists in a given field. Thus, the medical writer does not need to be doctor but had better know as much to write with authority on the subject.
- Eclectically — Even though writers are specialists when composing on a specific topic, they do not read in only one field. Rather, the science writer might read westerns, the romance writer military history, and the travel writer social science. They do so to expand their vocabulary and learn different styles.
- Purposefully — Writers read with an agenda. They read to capture key content, to unmask another writer's style, to unravel a puzzle challenging their intellect, to complete a chapter in their book.
- Critically — Writers are skeptical. They make certain that what they read is reliable. They ensure that it applies to what they themselves are writing about. And when they see the veracity of an opposing viewpoint, they adjust their own paradigm accordingly because they are reporters first, judges second.
- Socially — Writers talk up what they have learned through their reading with fellow writers, authorities, and friends. In this way, they discover alternative viewpoints and new sources for additional reading material.
