Wednesday, April 4, 2018

I recommend reading books to enable yourself to keep on writing.

It's the first Wednesday of April. Flowers are coming up around my house (I hope they are frost resilient), and only one of my new trees died (however, it was under warranty so only elbow grease is involved extricating it from its grave and replanting a new one). Easter is now behind us, and we are all participating in the Insecure Writer's Support Group if not the A TO Z challenge (good luck everyone!). If by some chance you are not participating, then you can go over to their website by clicking on THIS LINK and sign up.

I almost missed today's post. I got done with the final finishing touches of the composition that I'll now put up on Friday, and then I thought, "I know I'm missing something." And then it hit me, it's that time of the month again. So without further ado, the question for this month's IWSG is as follows:
When your writing life is a bit cloudy or filled with rain, what do you do to dig down and keep on writing?
When I'm down in the dumps, I tend to work on my writing by reading. Some may say that this isn't technically writing, but I beg to differ. I think that reading and consuming books is indeed writing, because it helps you to compose sentences in your head. It also helps by giving you another way to look at a manuscript, and you may become inspired by a story and want to write something similar. For example, my friend Patrick Dilloway told me once that he was reading a John Irving novel, and that he liked it so much he was "inspired" to write a book in the same vein. This is what I'm talking about...the whole idea that another person's writing can inspire you to write.

Anyway, that's my answer. When my writing life is a bit cloudy or filled with rain, I dig down by reading so that I can keep on writing. It just may not happen for a while, but I think that's perfectly okay.

9 comments:

  1. How do you suppose GRR Martin would answer that question? They say you should read in your genre though I tend to find most of my genre sucks.

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  2. At least you didn't miss it!
    Reading gets you back in the flow of words.

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  3. Reading is a great strategy to get unstuck. Reading is what inspired us to become writers. Nice post!

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  4. I think that is the perfect answer. I read to inspire me also.

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  5. Reading is vital to writing. It helps take us out of our own heads. It shows us what can be done (and what shouldn't be done). And we love reading or else we wouldn't become writers. I wholeheartedly agree.

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  6. Reading is a smart way to deal with it! I'll keep that in mind!

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  7. I absolutely agree that reading is one of the best ways to get the creative juices flowing again. :-D

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  8. Good advice. I tend to get new ideas while reading.

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  9. I totally agree, reading is a great way to get your subconscious to muse over words and plot ideas.

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