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If your energy levels start
to flag, don’t forget that reading is part of a writer’s job. Which doesn't mean it's a chore - it's a great pleasure. Setting
aside an hour or so at the end of each day to read a novel or non-fiction
book is time well spent. If you can also read on your commute, or while the kids are playing in the sandpit, or in any random corner of time that you can find, this will
fill your mental ‘in box’ with thoughts and ideas. And the rhythms and
patterns of other writer’s prose will also enrich and inspire your own
style.
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My own approach is to read anything I fancy. This is not about Self Improvement. I don't worry about reading the Booker prize winner - though I would recommend the brilliant Wolf Hall to anyone. If I want to re-read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, I do. (Unrelated news item - it's 30 years since Adrian Mole was published.)
Obscure or forgotten books can be wonderful discoveries - Anthony Burgess is probably best remembered for A Clockwork Orange, but his Shakespeare novel Nothing Like the Sun is a truly amazing piece of work, dauntingly clever and hauntingly strange.
This is another aspect of writing which Julia Cameron talks about. In The Right to Write she says that reading and absorbing visual art and the external world is all part of feeding our creativity and topping up 'the well' of our creativity. She believes that if we just write and write and don't feed our imagination, the well runs dry.
