J Robert Lennon

But a fiction writer ought to engage with other parts of the culture, too. This includes reading outside one's genre—I happen to favor sci-fi and mystery, but I think it's fine for literary writers to read YA, romance, fantasy, or whatever they please. Literary writers are in the privileged position of being permitted to raid any genre for tools to subvert and repurpose. We ought to be reading poetry, too, of course, and nonfiction. We should read instruction manuals, legal documents, restaurant reviews, and corporate newsletters. We should follow weird people on twitter and go to lots of parties and have lots of intense and ridiculous conversations with drunk people. We should go home for the holidays and argue with our families, and we ought to listen to lots of music and we ought to watch plenty of television, because television is, at the moment, the most artistically important narrative medium. We should eavesdrop, and we should gossip. We should probably be in therapy. We should probably drink more coffee.

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