“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”<\/p>\n
– Stephen King<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As I described in my post yesterday, I don’t have a lot of time. \u00a0I have to manage my time carefully.<\/p>\n
Something else talked about\u00a0yesterday is that writing is extremely important to me. \u00a0It’s one of the “large rocks” I put into my time bucket first.<\/p>\n
But what about reading?<\/p>\n
Truth be told, I don’t have much time to actually read. \u00a0The last book I actually read was\u00a0The Alchemist<\/a><\/em> by Paulo Coelho<\/a>. \u00a0It’s a great book, and I’m glad to have read it. \u00a0Unfortunately, it took me about 8 months, and it is not a long book.<\/p>\n I believe wholeheartedly that a good writer reads a lot. \u00a0And I want to be a good writer.<\/p>\n The solution, at least for me, has been audio books.<\/p>\n I talked about two ideas in yesterday’s post regarding time management. \u00a0Prioritize (put the big rocks in first) and Organize (combine activities when you can).<\/p>\n Audio books fit into the Organization part of my time management. \u00a0I can listen to a book while doing something else. \u00a0Most often, this is during my commute to work.<\/p>\n I started listening to books last year, and it’s had a huge improvement on my writing. \u00a0I’m consuming more books than I used to, even when it’s only two hours a day.<\/p>\n I recommend a subscription with Audible<\/a>. \u00a0It costs about what I used to spend on World of Warcraft. \u00a0With the subscription, I get a free book every month. \u00a0If I need a second or third book in any given month, the subscription provides\u00a0a good discount.<\/p>\n There some downsides to audio books. \u00a0The big one is that a bad reader can be a huge distraction. \u00a0As much as I love the Dresden Files, I had a hard time listening to\u00a0Ghost Story <\/a><\/em>because of the reader. \u00a0He wasn’t necessarily bad, but he didn’t breathe the life into it that James Marsters did with the other books in that series. \u00a0Then there was Ender’s Game<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Most of it was fine, but the woman providing the voice for Valentine needed to drink a red bull or something. \u00a0I’m currently listening to Words of Radiance<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Brandon Sanderson, and again, the woman reading the female voices isn’t quite right. \u00a0She reads mechanically, so it sometimes sounds like Siri telling me a story.<\/p>\n Audio books have been a fantastic way for me to consume books. \u00a0Try it if you haven’t already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” – Stephen King As I described in my post yesterday, I don’t have a lot of time. \u00a0I have to manage my time carefully. Something else talked about\u00a0yesterday is that writing is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}