I was a decent writer in high school, owing largely to the critical eye of my English teacher, Martin Ranft may he rest in peace. He pushed me to take the Advanced Placement test in English Composition which I did, thereby receiving three credits for the corresponding freshman class in College without having to take the course. When my neighbors in the dorm learned that I had placed out of the dreaded “English Comp”, the requests to help them with their writing piled up. That actually served as the basis for developing skills that, years later, would come in handy as a journal editor.
I can still recall the reply to my first manuscript submission to an ophthalmic journal. I was devastated when I got it back, the editor’s red ink pen screaming that I was writing too much like a novelist. He was right, and I learned how to write more clinically and scientifically, in the third person and in a more detached way. Blogging about clinically-related issues is a unique genre, allowing the writer to adopt the more informal style of an essayist.
Doing some extended spring cleaning this afternoon I came across a book by the novelist Haruki Murakami, originally published in Japan in 2015 and appearing in English last last year. Murakami writes: “It’s a very rough estimate, but my guess is that about five percent of all people are active readers of literature. This narrow slice of the population forms the core of the total reading public. There is a lot of talk today about the public becoming estranged from books and the written word, and I must admit that I see that, too, but I imagine the five percent would find a way to read somehow or other even if the authorities ordered them to stop”.
True enough for literature, but what about reading in general? My good friend and colleague Bob Sanet has often said to me: “Optometrists don’t read”. That’s not an indictment of Optometry, but is indicative of the public at large. (Of course, you’re an exception to this rule.) I suspect that is one reason why so may parents come with children to our practices about whom the primary concern is difficulty with reading. We’ve always differentiated “learning to read” from “reading to learn”, the former involving comparatively more development or perceptual/processing skills related to readiness, and the latter more ocular motor/accommodative/binocular skills related to comprehension and fluency. Naturally there is considerable overlap in these processes.
The art of writing seems closely related to reading, yet gets considerably less press (no pun intended). Somehow we consider reading to be an act, but writing to be an art. While reading and writing are intimately related, they are far more than opposite sides of a coin.
In the foreword to Dr. Lynn Hellerstein’s book on visualization I wrote that reading and writing are complementary processes: “In creative writing, for example, the author begins with images, concepts and pictures in mind, and selects the language that best conveys this to the reader. The reader, in seeing the words, must reverse the process as the language triggers images, pictures, and concepts.”
People who have borrowed books from me, or just browsed some of my stack when visiting, upon seeing my notes and highlights throughout the text and margins will say: “Do you realize that you talk to the author while you’re reading?” Well sure I do, but doesn’t everyone? Apparently not.
As I place Haruki Murakami’s book in a box that will go to the Goodwill Donation Center in town, someone unknown to me may someday come across my documentation of the interplay between writer and reader. Technology may change the medium, but the message remains the same.
The VisionHelp Blog 
Some thoughts to ponder regarding your insights. Reading is about an author’s viewpoint while writing is about our own thinking process. Our ability to remember critical information is enhanced by our ability to write it down. Obviously, I am only scratching the surface of a much more complex issue. Great READ.
Reading and writing, as Forrest Gump said, go together like peas and carrots. Every summer vacation was a reading orgy for me. I found a used book store and the new library about the same time and would lay in a hammock under a beautiful old Willow and read 30 to 40 books. Each filled with notes so I could turn them in a book reports later. I was a theater kid and in high school was blessed to have a drama teacher who selected only great plays. Because I read and visualized, I was able to direct several plays, Directing begins with visualizations of how the scriopt will look and sound on stage.
My email address, vision is future, came from an optometric meeting where a speaker speculated that reading and visualization enable us to time travel. Both past and future are there for us to visit through the portal of a printed page. One of the activities I devised is a book full of pictures and drawings, each intended to evoke verbal discription and to form a mental image bank as a foundation for visualization.
One of my first jobs was in the blueprint department of North American Aviation, where the Apollo and service module were designed and built. It was fun to meet engineers who had come up with some new device or method. I now know they have an image bank of concepts, one of the most basic is “Table”, a flat surface supported (or suspended) by a leg or legs. There were thousands of basic shapes, joints, seals that were and still are, used by all engineers. Well, perhaps by the best of them.
Visualization occurred for me after reading Marjorie Rawlings “The Yearling.” The very first chapter is of the boy, Jody, in a sandy bottom sink hole where he makes a water wheel of twigs and saw grass striops and drifts off to sleep as the wheel turns, drops of water dripping off the tips of the blades. The illustrations in that book introduce images here and there so you have a foundation for visualizing the characters as the story progresses. Loading the memory with images that can be recalled later.
Dr. Hellerstein has done optometry a favor by reviving the development of visualization in patients. As someone who has referred patients for VT regularly for decades, I have a strong preference for optometrists who include visualization in their regimens.