Read! Just read!

I never understand people who say they don't read while they're writing (or at all?)  because they don't want to be influenced. Oh hell, influence me! Please! Remind me that I know more words than the ones I hear every day from my friends. Show me remarkable ways of observing, so I'll remember what that feels like to choose an unlikely, unexpected phrase instead of just another synonym for "slender". If I start feeling like the prose is plodding, just clocking in and doing a job but without joy or style, I find that's the best cure.

In some cases, I even break down and read a novel set in the same period I'm writing in, just to refresh my sense of the era, and see it through someone else's eyes. My mind is not such a blank slate that I'll immediately start writing like that or any other author. My voice is my own, and I'm happy with it. I don't fear a fine writer, I revel in it. And then snap! I move on.
See also:  Dorothy Dunnett, Queen's Play
Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom
Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset