Basic Facts: Reading = Desire to Write

I know a fact: if I want to feel like writing, I need to read. This has been proven repeatedly in personal experience. Yet when I don't feel like writing, and I want to feel like writing, often (lately) I just decide not to write. "Not today," I say. Not today. Into next week I say this.

So, now I know exactly what I need to do. Not read over my draft just yet...but start reading something else.

I really need to keep a journal of what I read. I have a reading blog, but I need something less internetty...like a spiral-bound notebook. And even though I have like 50 spiral-bound notebooks, well I'll probably have to buy a new one anyway to be exactly right. I need to buy something that I'll have around for years and years, to document my reading over the years. I can hold myself accountable that way. And see how obvious it is that I will write more if I read more.

DUH!!!!!

It's a basic elemental fact that I need to hold onto these next few days while trying to get back into continuing the ms I started in November and dropped immediately after November ended. Funny...I had stopped reading when I started NaNo...and haven't read much since.

Now the big decision:

What to read? Fiction, definitely. But romance, literary, scifi...I'll have to peruse. I really don't feel like reading the books I got for Christmas. One is a "creative non-fiction," a term I don't even fully understand or give credence to. And I don't feel like reading "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" by a man who sold his fiction as a memoir (James Frey). Sometimes, I feel like I've read all the writing books out there. So I'm not motivated to read that. I'm glad my mom inscribed it with the year and stuff though. That was cool, I love that sort of stuff.

Maybe I'll read "The Accidental Tourist" again. Or "Crime and Punishment." I don't know! Too many decisions. I'll find something. I should probably read something I haven't read before that is acclaimed in some way (which doesn't guarantee but raises the chances I will enjoy it and therefore be motivated).

I'm learning I have to create willpower within myself. With some people it just seems to exist. They do what they 'want' to do naturally and without resistance from self. That's not me. I have to create the well, fill it, and maintain it, babysit it. There's nothing inside me doing it for me. Gorsh I were raised good weren't I?! No...that's just blame. I just have to learn to live and do the way I need to live and do, and stop comparing myself to those people who may only *appear* to be able to do things so easily. Maybe with them too, it is a supreme struggle. Either way, I need to focus on my own motivation and what I can do to make myself work without pushing too hard, which inevitably leads to giving up.