This is simply not true, even if it is commonly repeated among the folks that usually don't really write. Like how reading every source code that comes handy will not turn yourself into a great programmer, to be a good writer you need to: 1. Read selected books, and re-read good books more often then reading new stuff, to understand why they are good. 2. Read, from time to time, some bad book, and understand why it is bad. 3. And obviously you need to write a lot to become good at writing. And writing, in order to improve, is writing remembering, at the same time, the vibrations of the good authors you loved, and especially making the act of choosing of every word you put in the blank page, one after the other.