You Can Avoid Killing Dogs By Reading Every Day

Yesterday, I nearly hit a dog when I was driving through my neighborhood.

I was driving 25 - the speed limit - but these two kids were standing on one side of the road and they stuck their hands out, like they were asking me to stop. I was confused. I thought the kids were asking me to stop so they could cross the road, but there were no cars behind me, and I'm driving thinking, Uh, sure. You can wait till I drive past and cross the road then. But I slowed down anyway. And when I looked in front of me, a big black labrador was streaking past my car. I mean, right in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes, and I think my bumper grazed his hips. I think his tail thumped off my car on his happy way past.

The thing was, the kids didn't look urgent when they stuck their hands out. If they had looked urgent, with painted-pained faces, I would have reacted immediately, even without knowing why they had both tossed their hands out there. But instead, they looked nonchalant, like, "Dude, we want you to stop, but we won't tell you why."

If I had not heeded their instruction and begun to slow down, I would have become a registered dog killer, and those kids would have lost a good friend.

Have you ever heard the term, "A book is like a good friend"?

This is where the metaphor gets murky, but stick with me...

By the time I reached the exit to the neighborhood and began to breathe normal again, I (of course) started thinking about writing. And what I thought about was this:

Every aspiring author hears, "Reading all the time is just as important as writing all the time." But no one ever gets urgent about it. No one grabs your collar and shakes you and says, "Don't you get it! If you don't read, you'll never write something great!" All anyone ever does is nonchalantly throw their hand out and say, "Hey, um...you should read a lot. Okay?"

There are a lot of plants we water in our lives that do not grow especially tall and green and shining for a long time. We water them and we water them and it seems pointless.

A kid throws his hand out in front of your car, like, "Uh...no big deal, but could you stop? Would you mind?"

A reader who wants to read your great works of the future says, "Um, will you read a lot, please? Would you mind?"

And if all we ever do is say, "No. I don't see the point. I don't see any immediate results," well...squash. You'll run over the dog. You'll cream the "good friend" that was trying to reach readers.

In our lives, there are plenty of things we do today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, and ad infinitum) that do not yield immediate results. There are things we do each day, following the 'suggestions' laid out before us, and we don't understand why we are doing them for a long, long time. But look forward. See it? That dog is running across the road. Your published novel, your breakthrough, is running across the road. If you have heeded instructions - if you have been writing daily; if you have been reading daily; if you have been doing what you can each 'today' to build your 'tomorrow' - the dog will reach the readers intact. It will wag its tail, and they'll scratch its face, and they'll love it, and they'll never realize how close the dog was to: Splat! But you will know. And you will be happy, because the dog made it alive.

Do what you can today. Write. Read.
Do what you can tomorrow. Write. Read.
Do what you can the next day. And the next day. And the next.

Read as much as you write.

It might not make sense now. You might not see the reason. But if you heed this nonchalant advice, you'll thank yourself in the future.

Other Places Where I Hang Out:

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