Behind the scenes: On finding inspiration and joy through stories

Note: This is the last of six posts going behind the scenes of my writing process — what inspires me, the way I work, and how I recharge. For links to the rest of the posts, scroll down.

Writers get a lot of their inspiration from reading. Many of us — definitely including me — first learned what made a good story by reading well-written tales that inspired our imaginations, taught us how characters evolve over the course of a novel, and made us feel of all the emotions a good book can inspir...