Good writers need to be conscious readers.

Whatever you’re reading, you need to stand next to yourself and repeatedly ask “hey… what effect is this text having on you? Is it slightly ambiguous, and therefore confusing you? Is it anticipating your questions, and answering them delightfully at the moment they crop up? Is it working on your imagination? Is it hand-waving the data away?”

Conscious reading takes a bit of practice.

The prospect of becoming a conscious reader can sound appalling. It conjures up an image of the left hemisphere of the brain standing over the right, sighing and tutting and perpetually interrupting.

But it’s a vital part of being a good writer. And it’s not as bad as it sounds.

It’s analytical and it makes you highly critical, so it’s an early warning system that will tell you to abandon a text if it carries no meaning or sets off on a long rambling lie.

It’s a workout for your bull-detector.

It lets another writer make the mistakes before you do.

It teaches you to become a good writer.

It’s not complex. Most texts are designed to distract you from asking the question “so what?”. Writers will deny this, but then they’re usually not conscious writers so they’re probably unaware of their own deceptions.

When your first question is “so what?”, you’ve become a conscious reader.