Reading to Write

It seems that I have been on a hiatus with my blogging, having not posted anything at all last week. The truth is that I’ve also been on a hiatus from writing fiction. Since I finished the manuscript for my second women’s fiction novel, I’ve not written anything new. What I have been doing is reading.

Over the past two months, I’ve read fourteen novels. It feels a little bit as if I’ve returned to the pre-author me, where reading was my number one activity. I have noticed, may even have mentioned it before, that when I’m immersed in writing fiction I feel less than inclined to get caught up in someone else’s fiction. I certainly am interested in the books, and take them to bed with me to read before turning the light out. Inevitably my eyes will drop shut before I’ve barely read two pages. Not so for April and May. I’ve been gobbling up the stories and reading well into the late hours, not falling asleep in the middle of a paragraph.

However, while my fingers have been idle, my mind has not. In addition to reading so much these past couple of months, my imagination has been running wild with ideas for my next project. Whenever I do something that is “mindless,” such as washing dishes or walking or showering, ideas burst forth for stories and characters. Eventually I know I will narrow in on one of those ideas and get to work.

Does that mean that reading is my muse? That getting caught up in others’ stories sparks my own imagination?

I guess I’m not so much taking a hiatus from writing, but stoking my creativity. Hopefully, once I settle on a project and get into it, I’ll still keep reading. At least a page or two each night…