Whenever I start to feel like I’m losing productivity in a piece (symptoms include vacant eyes, drooling and rewriting the same sentence fifteen times), I take a break and Zen it. I find my inner peace and focus. And the way I usually do that is by reading.
People say that perfect practice makes perfect, but in writing, consistent reading is just as important. After all, how can you expect to write things others will read when you don’t read yourself? How do you know what people like? Besides giving a plethora of writing examples (both good and bad), it kickstarts your brain into creative overdrive, and sometimes the things that lurk that won’t speak up suddenly do.
I’m not the only one who says it. Check out this talk by Stephen King:
Think he’s the only one? Here’s Neil Gaiman:
I could go on, but I don’t want to weigh down this post with fifty different youtube videos.
The rest of this week’s focus is to read and immerse myself in a few different worlds. I’m hoping to put in some serious work on this first chapter so I can finally say it’s close to finished.
I hope.
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