Confessions of a Repentant Reader

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably already discovered the delightful rabbit warrens that make up Substack. What’s not to like? You can fritter away those hours when your magnus opus has hit the barriers – ‘…so why would that character have done that?’. Time spent reading posts, following new Substackers, trawling through their back-numbers – it’s research, right?  You’re learning more about how writers write what readers want to read. I saw a Substack post recently that fired the right synapses for me – a well-known author was proposing to start a ‘Couch to 5k’ programme, but for reading not jogging. I guessed they’d cover a piece of flash fiction in Week One followed by a short story in Week Two, and work up to War and Peace by the final week. Or maybe they planned to read for five minutes on Day One, ten on Day Two, and so on.

Me, I love taking up these challenges. I knew roughly how this one would work, as way back in the dawn of time, I shuffled my way through Couch to 5k as a (very slow) jogger. Two years ago, I did the Polar Bear Challenge; that meant swimming at least twice a week in our local sea (about 4°C in Orkney’s winter months), with no neoprene allowed. Then a few months ago I took on the Plank Challenge, to raise funds for Cancer Research. This involved holding the plank position for an increasing period every day, taking selfies and posting them on social media. From my initial goal of £150, my GoFundMe account registered donations of £600 by the end of the month. So when I saw the reading challenge my heart gave a little skip of excitement – I can do this!

Then reason set in. I already read….

I read for an hour or two in the evening, then for another hour in the bath before decanting myself into bed. Then I turn to a book for another hour or two if I’m awake during the night. I work my way through serious books downstairs and lighter books upstairs.

I consume books in hard back and paperback, with e-book or audiobook versions on my phone, depending where I am and what I’m doing.

I read when I should be doing just about anything else – housework, tax returns, getting rid of ‘stuff’…. or writing. Yes. I read when I should be writing.

So, I don’t need Couch to 5k for readers; I need a Couch to 5k for writers.

Here is my Writing Prompt for other repentant readers who ought to be writing:

• Choose either Morning Pages, before your day begins, or Evening Journal, after your busy-ness is done, or a mix.
• Set aside a four-week block, with a start date, and tell everyone you’re doing it.
• This is your Couch to 5k writing programme:
  • Week One: five minutes or 50 words a day;
  • Week Two: ten minutes or 100 words a day;
  • Week three: fifteen minutes or 150 words a day;
  • Week four: twenty minutes or 200 words a day.
• Stop writing once you’ve reached the goal each day, or keep going if you like; but make sure you record your progress.
• NB It doesn’t matter what you write – deathless prose, to-do lists, or even ‘I can’t think what to write’ over and over; this is just you getting back in training for being A Writer. Off the reading couch and on to the 5k. 5k is a good length for a short story, right?