If the stack of books on your bedside table is dangerously close to crushing you in your sleep, you probably need to organize your TBR (To Be Read) pile. Getting your reading life together is particularly important for writers, because reading widely and voraciously is one of the best ways to learn your craft. But there are so many books! How do you balance what you should read with what you want to read? How do you make sure that your reading life is supporting your writing life?

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Full disclosure: I’m writing this blog post as much for myself as I am for you, dear reader. I work at a public library, I’m active on Goodreads, and I also can’t stay away from bookstores. Since I’m constantly surrounded by books, I tend to have a bit of ADD when it comes to my reading life. It doesn’t help that I tend to switch up my book based on my mood—if I can’t sleep or if I’m sick, I gravitate towards graphic novels. If I’ve had a rough day, I’ll go for a psychological thriller that completely lifts me out of my everyday life...and so on and so forth until I’m reading five books simultaneously.

This scattered approach definitely isn’t helping me squeeze as much as I can out of my reading life. So let’s take a journey together to organize your TBR pile and make sure that our reading lives are supporting our writing lives.

SET GOALS AND STICK TO THEM

I set a yearly goal to read at least 60 books. (Keep in mind that I read a lot of middle grade, YA, and graphic novels. If you primarily read books written for adults, this might not be a realistic number.) It’s always in the back of my mind that I’m trying to hit this number, which is a small motivator to finish one book before starting the next one. You get to the finish line faster if you take a direct route rather than running off into the woods to chase every butterfly you see. There’s definitely a time and place for chasing butterflies, but if your goal is to consume as many books as humanly possible, you have to stay focused.

I upped my goal a little bit this year—I’m aiming to read 70 books. It’s kind of boring to achieve the same goal year after year, so try challenging yourself in new ways: read 5 more books than you did last year. Try a genre or author that’s wildly outside your normal tastes. There are tons of online reading challenges—like the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge—that’ll help push you outside your comfort zone.

If you need a sense of accountability, try joining a book group. Many public libraries offer book clubs that tackle a different selection each month. Or, if you’re like me and are vaguely terrified of human interaction, there are lots of virtual book groups. Goodreads has a robust online community with groups for every possible interest or reading goal. You don’t even have to put on pants!

READ WIDELY, BUT FOCUS ON YOUR CHOSEN GENRE

While it’s important to have a breadth of knowledge about literature, it’s critical to have a depth of knowledge in your chosen genre. Dig into the classics and stay on top of what’s current and popular. Need help picking titles that’ll be worth your time? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Book review publications like Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly;

• Publisher websites (The Big 5 publishers in the US are Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster);

• End-of-the-year best-of lists—try the ones created by the aforementioned book review journals, or try a local or national newspaper;

• American Library Association Youth Media Awards—if you’re writing for kids, the YMA winners will provide you with outstanding examples of writing for young people;

• Ask your local librarian for suggestions. Even if they’re not familiar with your chosen genre, they can use their superpowers to suggest relevant titles. 

Some writers might avoid reading in their chosen genre for their target audience—comparison is the death of joy, after all. If you find that you’re comparing your messy manuscript to the shiny book in your hands, don’t get discouraged—try reading books for your target audience but in a different genre. You might be less likely to fall into a black hole of comparison and self-loathing, yet you’re still downloading how other writers handle plot, characterization, and theme.

PRACTICE RESTRAINT WHEN BROWSING

Oh man, this one makes me want to add in the “crying with laughter” emoji. Because if I need to take any piece of my own advice, it’s this one. I do most of my reading on my Kindle, which is a magical portal to All. The. Books. It’s linked to the eBook catalogs for two library systems, which means I have literally THOUSANDS of FREE books at my fingertips. I’m like Augustus Gloop, but it’s books instead of chocolate.

So how does a voracious book lover practice restraint in the face of such riches? One thing that’s helped me is using the “Wishlist” feature. I don’t have to check out (or buy) every single book I’m interested in, and it’s easier to pass up that fascinating book about weird old-timey diseases (actually on my TBR list, don’t judge) if I know I’ve flagged it. Then you have a nicely curated list you can pick from when the time rolls around to start a new book.

Now that I think about it, what I actually mean is “minimize browsing altogether.” (Again, insert crying-with-laughter emoji.) Because time spent looking at all the gorgeous, shiny books is time not spent actually reading. And what’ll help us become better writers? It’s not reading the jacket copy, that’s for sure—it’s reading the darn book.

TRACK WHAT YOU READ IN A MEANINGFUL WAY

I use Goodreads but there are other social networking platforms for readers—or you might decide that good ol’ fashioned pen and paper does the trick.

If you read on a Kindle, you can link your Amazon and Goodreads accounts so that your Kindle highlights show up in the book’s entry on Goodreads. I love this feature, especially when I’m reading craft books and highlighting a bunch. It’s much easier to pull up your highlights via Goodreads rather than flipping through a print book looking for all your fluorescent yellow squiggles.

When you’re analyzing what you read, you can be as simple or as complex as you want to be. Personally, I simply add a few sentences to the “review” field to remind me what I thought of a book. (If there was something I really didn’t care for, I’ll add a comment to the “private notes” field so that any harsher criticisms aren’t visible to the author.) You might also want to track details like a book’s publisher or the author’s agent, especially if a story is similar to what you want to write. If they’ve already published or represented books in a similar wheelhouse, there might be interest in your story.

However, you can get as complex as “reverse engineering” a story. This is akin to taking a car apart in order to understand how all the pieces fit together. I heard Donna Janell Bowman give a talk on this method, in which she recommended pulling the story apart and slotting its component “beats”—or story elements—into the Save the Cat beat sheet. I’ve never gone that in-depth with dissecting a story, because I’d rather be reading or writing. But I can see the value in this kind of exercise, especially if you’ve taken care in selecting the very best reading material.

ORGANIZE YOUR TBR PILE, BUT LEAVE ROOM FOR ADVENTURE

As with everything in life, it’s great to set intentions and goals to give yourself some direction, but it’s also important to leave wiggle room for exploration. You don’t want to organize your TBR pile and reading life so rigidly that you can’t give yourself over to an evening of reading for pure enjoyment. After all, that’s why many people become writers—because they recognize the magic in the written word, and they want to create that alchemy themselves. Never lose that feeling of wonder and delight and inspiration that you get from reading. If you keep that reservoir filled, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a better writer.

-Amy Holland

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