Let’s take a break from movies. Here’s why it’s time we learned to love reading again

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

That’s according to the book “On Writing,” by Stephen King — one of the most prolific writers of our time.

From a very young age, I wanted to be a writer. However, I had one glaring issue: I did not like to read. (Sorry, Stephen)

As a kid, I loved making up stories. I wanted to create characters and send them on adventures. I wanted to make people laugh. I wanted to scare them. I just wanted to create something someone else enjoyed.

The problem was the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in reading the stories other people had written.

Reading felt like school. It was something a teacher assigned and then made me prove I’d actually done. I didn’t do math worksheets for fun, so why would I voluntarily come home and do more reading?

Then, I met Helen.

As a preteen, I picked up Mary Downing Hahn’s “Wait Till Helen Comes,” and that book gave me an experience I never had up to that point.

The world around me disappeared. I wasn’t sitting in my bedroom turning pages anymore. I was in the book. I could see Helen and the treacherous pond. I could feel the cold and the fear. That book scared me in a way I didn’t know a book could.

I’m not going to tell you “Wait Till Helen Comes” is one of the greatest books ever written — that’s not the point — but it was the right book for me at exactly the right moment in my life.

That’s when I first understood the power books held. I couldn’t wait to find another Helen, another story that could scare or worry me, a story that could excite me or make me care about someone who didn’t actually exist. I wanted that feeling again. I needed it.

A world that belongs to you

I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life writing about movies, and I love them. I love television too. There is something magical about sitting in a dark theater and watching a story unfold on a screen.

But books can do something movies and television never quite can: They make you a part of the creative process. An author gives you the words, but the pictures belong to you.

I’ve spent countless hours with Roland Deschain in Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series. King told me what Roland looked like, described the world around him, and gave me the people, places, sounds and smells — but the Roland I saw was mine and belonged only to me.

Millions of people have read those exact same words and created their version of Roland in their heads.

The same thing happened when I read Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” Herbert built Arrakis and gave me the Arrakeen Palace, but the palace I walked through in my imagination exists nowhere else. Someone else read the same sentences and walked through a different architectural marvel.

Then a filmmaker comes along and gives us an actual Arrakis. I love that. Seeing someone bring a world you’ve imagined to life is one of the great pleasures of adaptations.

Still, here’s also something a little strange about that. Suddenly, the world that belonged to you has walls and is shared with everyone else who has seen it.

That’s the beauty of a book: The words belong to someone else, but the world you see is yours. And when you spend enough time in those worlds, the people start feeling like they belong to you, too.

I’ve had characters become old friends. I’ve worried about them, rooted for them, and missed them when the story was over.

Every once in a while, you close a book and have to remind yourself that you’re saying goodbye to people who never actually existed.

When did reading become a luxury?

Somewhere along the way, though, reading seems to have become something a lot of us talk about doing rather than something we actually do.

“I wish I had more time to read.”

I’ve said it. You’ve probably said it. And to be fair, life is busy.

Work, kids, school and a million other things make for a busy and stressful schedule. By the time we finally get a few minutes to ourselves at the end of the day, the idea of concentrating on anything can feel exhausting.

But I’m not convinced a lack of time is the whole problem. Truth is, we still have downtime — we’ve just gotten really good at filling every second of it.

We pull out the phone to check a text or email, or watch a video. Then we scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and — you get the idea.

Suddenly, 45 minutes have disappeared and I’m not sure what I just did with them.

I’m not anti-technology. (That would make me a pretty spectacular hypocrite, considering how much of my life happens through a screen.) Technology has given us incredible things.

With modern technology, we can talk face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world. Technology means we have access to more information than any generation in human history. And technology has provided us advances in science and medicine that once sounded impossible but are now part of everyday life.

That said, I also wonder if all that convenience has quietly taken a few beautiful things from us.

Communication has never been easier, yet sometimes it feels like we’re getting worse at actually talking to each other.

Entertainment has never been more accessible, yet our attention is constantly being pulled in a dozen directions.

By contrast, reading asks us to do something that has become increasingly unusual: Stay. Stay with this story. Stay with these characters. Stay in this world for a while.

A book isn’t going to show you something new every 12 seconds to keep you interested; it asks for your attention. Then, if you’ve found the right one, it rewards you for giving that attention.

You don’t visit that world for 12 seconds — you live there for days, if not weeks. Sometimes you find the right series, and you stay for years.

Finding another Helen

Reading eventually did more for me than entertain me; it made me want to write even more.

Once I fell in love with books, I started paying attention to how writers did it. How do you weave words together in a way that makes someone see something that isn’t there? How do you introduce a character on a page and make a reader care what happens to them 300 pages later?

How do you create a vibe that unsettles a kid so much that he’s still talking about it in his 40s? I wanted to figure out that formula. I still do.

That’s why I have a hard time believing someone when they tell me they don’t like reading. Maybe you really don’t, but I have a theory.

I don’t think you dislike reading; I just don’t think you’ve found your Helen yet.

Maybe horror isn’t your thing. Your interests might lie in romance, fantasy, historical fiction, or maybe a biography. Maybe it’s something I’ve never even heard of.

My advice? Keep looking.

Remember, I was the kid who wanted to become a writer but thought reading felt too much like homework. Then the right book found me at the right time.

You know what? How about we all help somebody else find theirs? Let’s turn the comments into a book exchange.

Tell me the book that did it for you, the one that got you to love reading. It’s not necessarily the “best” book you’ve ever read, or the one you’re supposed to say because it sounds impressive. Give me the one you couldn’t put down — that one book you recommend to everyone.

And if you haven’t found that book yet, tell us what kinds of stories you love. Maybe someone else can point you toward it.

I’m looking for my next read, too. So, selfishly, I’ll be taking notes.

Few things are better than discovering a new favorite book. This is my gentle — maybe nerdy — plea for you to put down the phone for a few minutes and pick up a book.