Should i read or write more if i want to be good writer?

>>8873907

both.

>>8873907
Being a good writer is about having the right genetics more than anything else desu.

I am a triple major at a prestigious university known for its writing program. My senior dissertation is coming up, and though I sometimes write well, I'm still not 100% comfortable in always nailing the effect that I want.

My advisor (published in Harpers, NY Times, others) has told me repeatedly that reading a shitton is the most important thing to do. It's a tricky balance, but if you're as underread as I am (or hopefully, WAS at this point), reading many different books from a writer's perspective is crucial. Writing is important too, of course, but I think there is a threshold of reading that must be met first.

I'm not going to try that Malcolm Gladwell "durr 10000 hours of reading!" bullshit, because it is bullshit. But my intuition tells me to read pretty fucking voraciously until I feel comfortable talking about a solid amount of great writers-because if I can creatively talk about American lit from Dickens to Wallace, I probably have a pretty good fucking perspective on writing-and at that point, the reading:writing ratio should be changed in favor of writing. But if you're still in the stage where you read On the Road and say "Wow, I want to write a stream of consciousness novel about fucking around through America!," you gotta read more.

>>8874117
thank you for interesting perspective

Read more. I can usually tell when an aspiring author isn't very well read, because the things they worry about are things that come very naturally to someone who has read more than them.

Take someone who has been listening to music their entire life and tell them to come up with a song structure, and they will do it for you a lot quicker than the person who was raised by wolves and who only ever listened to one or two songs in their life. The latter would have to think very hard to come up with the things that the former would already know instinctively, and once they (the former) are done with that they can focus on the more interesting stuff like the melody and its function, its relation to the chord progression, how it can be used to create interesting harmony, etc

>>8873912
/thread

>>8873912
Both you cretin, otherwise how the fuck will you know what to put on the page

if you were to focus on one, the writing, definitely writing. It's a craft like anything else and you will learn by writing and seeing what you're doing wrong or not to your liking. Reading is essential too of course but you can be a pretty good writer without being well-read. Stephen King has admitted to not reading more than 20 books a year and he is great at lean, simple prose

>>8874117
>talk about American lit from Dickens to Wallace
Dickinson?