"Reading to Write"- Stephen King

“If you want to be a good writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcuts,” indeed as these words were spoken by Stephen King in his opening lines of “Reading to Write.” In this short essay there were many good points on how to become an effective writer, and one of the most important qualities in order to be a better writer is to be an efficient reader. As King states, “the bad books teach more than the good ones,” and he goes on to point out that the novelist Murray Leinster overused the word zestful which made his work mediocre and gave King to warning not to use identical words in one writing. “Reading is the creative center of a writer’s work,” proclaimed King as he emphasizes that you cannot develop good writing without initially acquiring to read well.