Should I Read or Should I Write?

Motivated readers can always find time to read, snatching moments in line at the bank or the post office, carving out an hour here or there, after everyone else has gone to bed. Arguably, e-readers make this even easier. But, as my friend, poet Sandy Longhorn observes, writers have a special dilemma: when you have a free moment, do you read or do you write? Unless we're J.K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman (who admittedly have their own distractions), we're already doing other work to support our habit and shoehorning writing into our days. Carving out time for reading on top of that is truly a challenge. Yet we know we must. As Stephen King famously said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have time the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."