Recreational reading – remember that?

Whether it's the coming new year, or just a renewed sense of future possibilities after connecting with an old editor friend-turned-agent, I've rediscovered the pleasure of reading for recreation, and the effect it can have on one's own writing.

All writers are different, of course. As for me, I read mostly for information. I enjoy it, but years and years of reading for information can leave one with a kind of fatigue that is not immediately discernible. Something just "feels" ... lacking.

So it was that I recently decided to relax my mind and recharge my writing batteries by reading for pleasure. Twain. Cooper. Natty Bumppo. Huck Finn.

Dracula.

TRENDING: The coup is failing

Hello, what's this, you say?

Why – why, pray tell – would anyone enjoy reading about the malevolent count ... at the holidays?

Can't 'splain it, exactly, but boy, what good fun. And reading Bram Stoker's classic horror story for pace, plot, character development – it can't help but enhance my own abilities, whatever they are, as I write my own stuff. Having never been a fiction writer, who knows, maybe I'll try my hand at it, if only for the practice and pleasure of exploring a written world unknown to me.

I've long wondered how horror writers develop the ability to scare readers. Alas, I think we analyze it too much. For when Jonathan Harker first peers into the dark night and sees Dracula emerging from his window and scampering, lizard-like, down the spooky walls of his castle, well, the hair raises on the back of one's neck.

I confess that I've never really "gotten" the point of fiction. That is to say, what would possess someone to create characters when there is already a world full of real ones? I've asked any number of writers, unknown and well known, the same question and I always get a different answer.

Suffice to say that we can learn from each other, and I think a key for aspiring writers is not to over-analyze most things. You are a unique creature, with uncommon skills. If you find yourself stuck in your writing – either the page won't come to you anymore, or you are struggling with some other obstacle, like time to write – perhaps it's time to take a bit of a break and read for recreation, for pleasure. It will clear your head.

Not all have such opportunities, but the other day at my farm, I built a fire outside and sat in the chill as I read "Dracula." The wind actually did blow through the trees of a dark wood adjacent to my property, and a dog howled somewhere. Really, it did.

For three luxurious hours, I sat there reading Stoker's masterpiece, warming by a fire, as Jonathan Harker did in his world. The whole thing relaxed my mind to such a degree that I haven't felt so fresh in writing opportunities in a long time.

This is what I've discovered in the secret benefit of reading for pleasure: put aside your newspaper or technical book or blog about the perils that have befallen our country. Just for a little while. Until you re-gather your writing strength.

You might want to write that book, or perhaps blogging is your ambition. Whatever it is, break routine for a short season.

It's the New Year coming up, and for writers, nothing could be more golden. The chance to delete (or burn in a fire) that manuscript that just doesn't do it for you. The opportunity to build your author website and make a serious commitment to craft the very best blog posts you can, and on a basis that is consistent with what you feel is right for you.

Do that, and you'll feel positively renewed, as did the fictional Harker (more real, I suspect, than we know):

June. – No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth.

Resolve to read for fun. You'll find that whatever fears you posssess as a writer will scamper down the walls of your mental prison.

Never to be seen again.

Discover how real and relevant Bible prophecy is to you with Jim Fletcher's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine): How to stop worrying and learn to love these end times"