Welcome back. And welcome to technique four, which is good writers are good readers. good writers are good readers. And this is in strategy eight habits. Once again, it's one of those that most people know. In practice.
Some people do it, some people don't. But almost always good writers are good readers. Once again, there's probably some exceptions to that. But let me read a quote from Stephen King. I think it sheds a lot of light on this subject. It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little or not at all in some cases should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.
Can I be blunt on the subject? If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write and that's from Stephen King, and that is from on writing. Not on writing. Well Badinter, but on writing by Stephen King, another great book on The writing process on what King does on just writing in general. And think about it this way, when you were a kid, and your mom told you, you don't need to be hanging out with that person, they're trouble. They're a bad influence.
She didn't want you to hang out with the bad kids in school because she didn't want you to end up behind the building smoking cigarettes and cursing people out and skipping school, or anything like that. And so she was looking out for your well being she wanted you to graduate and do well and be an upstanding citizen and be happy and stay out of trouble and not hurt other people. People do absorb what's around them. And people that have bad influences, you know, it's obvious, that's going to influence them as well. And so it's like that with reading people absorb what they read, and what or whom is around them. And so if you read a lot of writing, hopefully good writing, that becomes part of your unconscious Mind and then when you write those techniques, you will know whether something is correct grammar or not because you've seen it so many times you may not know the rule for it, but you'll know what's correct and what's incorrect.
Your instincts, things that you've written will kick in, and you'll know whether something works or it doesn't work based on what you've read before. So if you've read a lot of good writing, you are more likely to be a good writer. And so good readers. good writers are good readers and that is technique for from strategy eight.