Read titles too...

As promised from my last post...

If you want to write, you must first read.

But don't be picky. Read everything.
And I mean, everything.

Read the excellent literature your English teacher told you to.
Read the "fluff" your teacher sniffed at.

Read the poetry, of every kind and variety you can lay your hands on.
Read blank verse, and try to understand all of it. If you can't understand it, feel it.

Read children's books, and take time to look at the pictures.

Read coffee-table books.

Read the graffiti in the bathroom stalls and in the underpass on your way to work. And wonder what it meant to the person who put it there.

Read post-it notes, and grocery lists, and business cards, and imagine the people behind them.

Read warning labels, and ingredient labels, and instruction labels, and those labels on the inside of clothes that dig into your side and make you wonder if this will fit after you dry it.

Read the bottom of your shoe.

Read bill-boards, and advertisements, and instruction manuals.

Read catalogs, bills, envelopes, and magazines. What will become of them, when they are discarded? What will they become?

Read calendars, planners, and itineraries, but don't let them rule you.

Read magazines, ads included.

Read autobiographies, and biographies--take to heart the difference between how people saw themselves and how other people saw them. Then decide how that knowledge should shape you.

Read the Bible, preferably in several translations. And the Qur'an, the Apocrypha, Kitab-i-Aqdas, Tipaka, The Book of Mormon, and every other text used throughout humanity's history to guide their actions and thoughts. Read them with open eyes, heart, and mind, knowing that an essential part of the Human Condition is the pursuit of Truth.

Read foreign languages, even if you're not sure of what they mean.

Read newspapers--online, in print, and satirical.

Read blogs you agree with--and blogs you disagree with.

Read fiction--sci-fi, fantasy, historical, and every other kind as well.

Read textbooks.

Read scripts, playbills, Shakespeare, and acting manuals.

Read the dictionary.

Read the encyclopedia.

Stuff as much information into your mind as you think you can possibly hold, about everything around you. Become passionate about knowledge--hunger after it, be voracious! The written word holds so much power--and it's all around us.

If you want to write, the best way to learn how do to that well is to read.