You’ve been saying something that you think is profoundly true for a while. You feel like you unlocked a great secret, hack or have an inside track on the universe.

Then either you can’t express it well or someone with a larger soap-box comes along and says it before you can,

You have a moment of “ah-ha! I really am so brilliant!” and then “Damn! but now I can’t take credit because he said it first.”

This affirmingly frustrating situation happened to me recently.

Good writers read.

I re-tweeted Jeff Goins the other night (MT=Modified Tweet, I changed his a little):

@CoffeeBooksBeer: Hear, Hear! MT @jeffgoins: Good writers read. It’s just that simple. http://t.co/5ocIVqPd

His article makes the case that reading makes you a better writer. Not exactly groundbreaking material here and I promise that isn’t my entire brilliant idea.

I got a response saying simply: “data?”

At first I was going to dismiss it (troll?!) but I reconsidered. Sure, there is abounding anecdotal account of reading influencing great writers but is it a truism or actually true? Is there data to show causality?

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