What is Reading?

Needs work…

Did you know that reading can actually benefit your writing? From consuming secondary sources regarding your topic to reading a biography about Bessie Coleman to entering the futuristic fantasy worlds of Nnedi Okorafor or Sarah J. Maas or diving into the graphic novels of Neil Gaiman, consuming literature can help you gain better reading, writing, and interpretation skills. Plus it is a creative outlet for learning! Tapping into your creativity can be a powerful thing. It can also be a powerful thing when you relate to a work; for that is when you can write and discuss with excitement and eagerness.

Reading all sorts of texts can help you become a more well-rounded writer and can help you gain your own unique, creative, and expressive style. It can help lead to improvement in organization, sentence structure, and stylistic choices.  This is even and maybe especially true of reading and consuming speculative fiction and texts outside of academic articles. Students can sometimes feel constricted by the plain and dry style of academic language. This can lead to them attempting to copy that technique, which can subsequently lead to a seemingly forced writing style and sentences and paragraphs that do not flow together. When you read something that engages your imagination, that makes you feel something, that introduces you to a new piece of history or a new world or interesting person, this can help you feel more open and confident in making your own stylistic choices and in relaying your topic and information and points to readers. Reading can inspire and invoke your own muse.