The best thing you can do as a writer is read.

It’s the most basic piece of writing advice there is. Every bestselling author, every publishing hopeful, every poet, every screenwriter, every high school English teacher—everyone will advise you to read.

The same goes for every other creative endeavor. If you want to be an actor, you need to see lots of theater, movies, and TV shows. If you want to be a dancer, you should see everything from the most experimental modern movement performances you can find to the splashy, expensive productions of The Nutcracker. If you want to be an athlete, you need to study how other athletes and teams practice and play.

When a piece of advice becomes a cliché, it tends to fade into the background. Just like getting enough sleep and drinking lots of water, it’s so obvious that you probably don’t bother to think about it anymore. But, just like how you start to feel off when you stop eating your vegetables, if your writing life is stale, evaluating your reading habits really is the first place to start.

How Much Is Enough?

It’s all well and good to be Stephen King and have no demands on your time other than reading and writing prolifically, but that’s not realistic for the other 99 percent of us. And racing to tick off one hundred books a year will only lead you to skipping all but the quickest reads.

That aside, you do need to fill up your life with as much reading as is reasonable for you personally. How do you figure out what that looks like?

Are you keeping your finger on the pulse of the buzziest new books this year? Do you know when your favorite authors have their next books coming out? When was the last time you checked out a debut writer?

The number of books is going to be different for everyone, depending on your circumstances, so don’t get too focused on the number. Instead, you’ll know you’re reading a good amount when you have quick and easy answers to the above questions, and when you can walk into your local bookstore and at least have cursory knowledge of the staff recommendations in your genre.

But if you go into the store and feel like you’re walking into a roomful of strangers? If you realize you can’t remember the last time you canceled plans to finish an absorbing book? If you’re drafting a query letter for your manuscript and you can’t come up with any comp titles? You’re probably not reading enough.

Which Books?

Reading at least some of the big names in your relevant genre is pretty standard. But what about backlist titles? What about classics? What about hidden gems? What about reading outside your genre?

The answer is yes to all the above.

If you’ve already covered the first point and you feel confident that you’re reading plenty, evaluate those habits and look for blank spots. Have you covered the bestseller list but have a few lesser-known authors you want to try? Put down the glossy hardcovers and grab something off the beaten path. Is there a cornerstone novel of your genre that you just never got to and now it feels embarrassing to admit you never read it? It’s still there waiting for you. Have your friends recommended something that sounds appealing but isn’t in your genre? Pick it up anyway.

It’s good to follow your cravings when it comes to books. Just don’t forget that even if you’re in an enjoyable reading rut, it’s still a rut. Find the areas where you aren’t as well read as you’d like and fill in those gaps.

Exceptions to the Rule

“Read more if you want to be a better writer” is as close to a universal rule as it gets, but there’s no such thing as a rule that is always absolute.

We all go through different seasons in life, and that’s going to affect how much time you have at your disposal. A college student on summer break is going to have more reading time than a parent with a newborn. Some writers even find that during certain stages of the writing process, they actually have to stop reading, otherwise they unconsciously start imitating other authors.

That kind of limitation is often impossible not to accept. But it’s also important to listen to yourself when you want to put your book down, not just when you need to.

Instead of forcing yourself to keep picking up books just to get through them, ask yourself why your choices aren’t engaging enough to keep you from picking up your phone instead.

If you’re getting bored with your genre, try something totally different or even just a different subgenre. There are a lot of books on any bestseller list, so if you’re simply looking at number one and feeling uninspired, look a few ticks further down. The next time you go to your local bookstore, tell an employee about a book you disliked, tell them what you didn’t like about it, and see if they have a recommendation that will check different boxes.

There’s a difference between working consciously to make sure you’re reading widely and reading only books you think you’re supposed to be reading. And all the categories of books you want to make sure you’re covering will have a lot of titles, so disliking one doesn’t mean you can’t find another you’ll like better.

Don’t Overthink It

There are so many wonderful books in the world, no one will ever have time to read enough of them. That means that there’s no excuse for anyone, especially a writer, to ever be without an absorbing book in their hand.

So ignore BookTok and Goodreads and anything else that makes you think you’re behind. If you’re stealing any moment you can to get to that next chapter, you’ll know you’re doing it right.