Why Read? Why Write?

“A book lying on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”—Henry Miller

I can’t imagine there is a writer who does not read. It is simply an impossibility, and if there is anywhere a writer who says he does not read, that person for sure does not write. Or, perhaps worse, when he does write the result is…well….

Incidentally, I myself am a man, but I include women in these thoughts since they form the majority of writers and readers both.

Of course, not all serious readers write. Some simply can’t, even as they may be as discerning a reader as exists. But all writers must read and, I expect, most read far more than they write. That’s the case in my case. I’m good for a few hours a day of writing, maybe four or five days a week. Oddly, that small but intense commitment has resulted in a surprising number of nicely reviewed books, fiction and non-fiction. But while I’ve written many, I’ve read thousands more.

Writing is always a solitary venture in which the author…alone…struggles with himself to produce the sentences. There is such solitude in the endeavor. The morning or the late night continues on, your efforts struggling usually (in what is a great irony) wordlessly. Yes, the words are there on the page or on the screen, one after the other more and more.

But you are alone, fashioning them in silence.

I myself don’t suffer much when I write: the demons that I understand plague so many writers, the self-doubt, the convictions of your own foolishness, the feeling that this book is tripe, that you are wasting your time, that you are a rank fool. I find actual joy in the fact that the characters I invent are indeed people, if only in my own mind, and that I am surrounded by them and converse with them throughout the time I’m making them up. We’re always talking, surrounded by that silence I mentioned, and believe me, it’s a noisy crowd.

But I worry when I look at some of my sales results. This book or that doesn’t do as well as some other one I did or the one I wrote so long ago. It is then that I wonder about Henry Miller’s remark. Which of us is wasting that ammunition? Is it the reader, really? Or is it the author whose unread book is lying on that shelf. Everything in that book rests in profound silence. Until it is read by somebody, the book is like the grave. It suffers from the injustices the author has described…the ruined marriage, the betrayal in war, the children lost, the murder committed, the self-immolation…whatever…the very end of life itself, all of it stuck in profound quiet and abnegation, unread.

The ammunition it contains goes wasted.

The literary agent or the publisher will tell you to be more cognizant of your possible audience. Fashion the book so that it can reach the average reader. Make it readable. But remember here that, in general, literary agents and publishers don’t write. The problem with their advice is that it does not take into account the writer’s very passions, which of course should include his wish to save his soul. Therein may lie the real reason itself to write, although, to be sure, many writers don’t seem to care about even that. But if you’re a writer who worries about your story with your very soul, you’ll put those words in play knowing that that soul is your prime reader.

And there’s no waste in that.

Copyright © 2025 Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.

Note: No Plagiarism Software, also known as Artificial Intelligence, was used in the composition of this piece.

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Also, please see Terence Clarke’s new novel, The Guns of Lānaʻi, here on Substack. 1907. Love and war in Hawai’i.

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