Reading is Good for Writing

Apparently, reading is good research for writing.  Who knew?  Well, a bunch of people, I guess.  Anyway, I love to read and should probably do more of it.  Reading good stuff - and bad stuff, for that matter - is inspirational for my writing.  I remember having a conversation with a friend about the Harry Potter series.  She wondered why I found it so compelling (for those of you unaware, I am a complete Harry Potter fanatic).  I went on for a while about the depth of the story - clearly, Ms. Rowling has reams of notebooks full of information and ideas about the whole wizarding world and its population.  I chatted about the timeless, human themes - good vs. evil, the heroic journey, love and romance, mythic beasts and metaphor.  The last thing I said was that I loved the series because I wanted to be able to write like J.K. Rowling.  That was the one thing that my friend didn't get - that wasn't something she thought about when she read books.  I was surprised.  I thought everyone read books because they wanted to write books.  Apparently not.

So, now that I've got a really good (well, I think it's really good) idea for a novel I'm reading for research.  Not just non-fiction and archival sources - part of the story is set in the 1930s.  I've started reading mystery novels published in the 1920s and 1930s to get a feel for the literature and language of the period.  Reading is very good for writing!

Cheers!