Out of all the reading I've read on writing one thing is incredibly consistent: In order to write, you must read. Over the course of the last few months I have consistently blogged less and less. I have attributed this to increased duties at work, at home, worrying about how to fix this, that or the other. In reality, I haven't read much of anything. I haven't even listened to many books on tape (or CD or mp3). It isn't just that I haven't had many thoughts to blog about, I haven't worked on my work in progress much over the course of the last year. If you recall, that's the year that I set the goal of finishing my WIP, which I am awfully close to but I've been awfully close to that point since last year at this same exact time.

About a month ago I commented on the fact that the only television shows I watch any more (other than NFL football) are only 30 minutes long. This of course means there is 21 minutes of program and 9 minutes of commercials I fast forward through because I LONG ago got to the point where I could barely watch television without recording it on my TiVO (or now DVR). Yes, this does make some football games interminably long as well since more often than not I don't record them.

Along this same line, I picked up a Christmas gift of short stories a few days ago. I'm not very far into it when I did my other normal reading habit--reading more than one book at a time. So now, after a holiday I am listening to a book on tape, reading a book of short stories, reading a non-fiction book, and my brain instantly began stewing in the thoughts that abound and cause successful writers to warn prospective writers that they cannot write without reading.

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