Well, I didn’t give in to speed reading but I have to say – I fairly flew through my book list over the end of the Christmas holidays and into the New Year and am now on the final novel – The House Where It Happened, by Martina Devlin.
It just goes to show how much reading you can get done at your leisure when you have a little time to spare, but as always at this time of year, it makes me more mindful of the need to set that time aside throughout the year. Holidays allow for more reading, but let’s not leave the bulk of it til then!
I had also intended to write a story or two over the break and lo and behold, my creative juices were in full flow and I put this down to all that reading. As writers, we know you need to read to write… it’s how we learn the way of stories and develop our own style, but sometimes, it’s good to be reminded of just how important this is.
After reading my festive book list, I managed to commit three new stories to paper and, while I’m happier with two of them than the one in between, the point is – I have three new stories to work with and they came all the more easily because I was reading constantly. My stories aren’t related to what I read, in that the subject matter is different – the point is, reading feeds writing.
I don’t know if anyone else has been similarly inspired over their holidays, but it’s been a fruitful time for me and I’m planning to keep this up!
PS In other happy writing news, on New Year’s Day the editor of The Incubator journal in NI (link in my blog sidebar) asked me to become their features editor, so I am delighted to say I’ll be interviewing a few Irish authors over the course of the year for this 🙂