The Dean Koontz Secret to Becoming a Good Writer
I’m aware of Dean Koontz. Have I ever read one of his books? No, I have not. But I know he’s a famous and popular writer, so he must be pretty good. (He writes Dad Books, right?)
Recently, in a National Treasure movie-type discovery, I came across an undoubtedly oft-overlooked forward written by Mr. Koontz to a classic mystery novel by a long-dead author. At first, I wondered what the heck I was reading, but was soon enchanted. Mr. Koontz plucked a nagging thought from my head, but instead of grousing about it on Twitter, he wrote a smart and logical essay revealing his secret to being a good writer.
Regular readers know that I’m on a Nero Wolfe kick right now. I can blaze through a classic mystery in about three evenings of bedtime reading. The New York Public Library has a bunch of them on their electronic shelves that I can check out and upload it to my ereader in about 5 minutes without moving anything other than my thumbs. My head stays on the pillow the entire time. Technology didn’t kill books, it only made them stronger!
A few nights ago, I finished a book, tiptoed into the other room to inform my partner,* who was engaged in his pre-sleep occupation of finally watching The Americans. But I wasn’t quite ready to shut my eyes yet. Instead of starting a book that I knew would teach me something difficult, I borrowed the next available Nero Wolfe, which just so happened to be book #8: Where There’s a Will. This book was first published in the 1940s at least, but for some reason this e-book edition included a forward by wildly popular and much more modern crime (He writes crime, right?) novelist Dean Koontz. The forward wasn’t dated, but he makes reference to Rex Stout having passed, so it’s post-1980s at least.
Do you want to know the secret to becoming a good writer, according to Mr. Koontz?
Good writers read everything.
There is something to be learned from good writing in every genre and every form. Consume other books wildly and unsparingly.
Here’s the man himself: “I have learned a great deal from an omnivorous literary diet…. [T]he very best examples of writing from any genre are equal in quality to the best examples from any other genre, and the finest popular fiction is equal to the finest “serious” fiction.”
We know that writers should read in their genre, sure, but why stop there? Koontz goes on to make the case that literary fiction writers should read genre fiction, genre fiction writers should read nonfiction, nonfiction writers should read the backs of cereal boxes.
Mr. Koontz said that most readers wouldn’t know it but he is influenced by Rex Stout (among hundreds of others).
Again, I’ve never read a Dean Koontz book.**
Too often I’ll see a tweet that I assume is obvious trolling—yet hundreds of WoTs (Writers on Twitter) fall for it—that asks some variation of the question: “Can you be a good writer if you hate reading?”
First of all, ew.
Second, the answer is no. And the WoTs line up usually and say so, but it’s nice to have this opinion reinforced by someone who has surely made millions of dollars off of being a good writer. No, you can’t be a good writer without reading, sweetie. (I wish we the #writingcommunity of Twitter could just agree collectively to ignore these very dumb questions, but that’s asking too much.)
Writing well is not an innate ability, it is a skill. There are really only two ways to get better at the skill of writing: first, by writing, duh, but second, by reading.
Read your own work, and read everyone else’s too.
Read everything!
But, you might ask, hypothetically, how will I know that I am writing with my own voice instead of doing an impression of another writer?
Mr. Koontz addresses that too!
“[This writer] apparently functions under the impression that his talent came with an engraved-in-stone stylesheet of prodigious specificity, a gift from God that has acquired no patina from life, and that he would have written precisely the same stories when he was two weeks old as he writes now, if only his fingers had been big enough to deal with a typewriter at that tender age.”
So there you go, my dear writers. If you suffer from crippling self-doubt—and who doesn’t?—stop whining and go read literally anything until the feeling passes.
Mr. Dean Koontz, famous writer, says so.
Leave me a comment if you love Dean Koontz and are puzzled whether I am making fun of him or not. (yes, and also, no.)
*I always make a point to announce to my partner when I’ve finished a book. This is a deeply gratifying ritual for me because of how much it annoys him.
**Maybe this is our year, Dean!
