Why Not Writing Can Be Just as Important as Writing

As a writer, you've probably heard these two pieces of advice hundreds of times:

 Read a lot.

    and

 Write a lot.

Authors give this advice on the FAQ's page of their site a lot when people ask how to become a writer.

And it's true. 

To be a good writer, you have to read a lot, and you have to write a lot.

But that's not all you have to do.

To be a writer, you also have to live a lot. 

I realized this when I was writing in a WIP about how life changes us and tweaks us, no matter how hard we try to resist it. By simply living, we are changed, even if we don't realize it. It was meant to be comforting to my MC, but after I wrote it, I read it and was shocked by just how true it felt.

Every time we meet someone new, or go to a new city, or see a new movie or read a new book, we take in sights and thoughts and feelings. We can't shut ourselves away from these things, unless we just stopped living completely.

All these things that we experience, they change us. When you go to bed at night, you're not the same person you were when you got up that morning.

It might not be a big, noticeable change, but it will be a change. Some days it might be something huge that you learned about a friend that maybe you wish you didn't know, or maybe you just heard a new song that inspired you.

As a writer, the idea that we need to stay inside all day and pound away at our keyboards so that we can meet our daily quota of words is drilled into us.

Sometimes we forget that if we haven't lived, we won't have anything to write about.

Ideas don't come out of nowhere. You have to be inspired first.

So go outside. Visit a museum, or an entirely new city. Listen to a song you've never heard before, or to an old one that you've heard hundreds of times. Meet new people and try new things and read new books and old ones too. But most importantly, live.

The most exciting ideas often come to me when I'm on vacation. The influx of new experiences and facts and places and people is just too much for my brain to handle, and it explodes in a bunch of new story and character ideas.

Embrace the fact that you might have to stop writing to be inspired.

Step away from the computer, go outside, and take a walk. Watch a movie. Start a new TV Show. Cook a recipe you've never tried.

Live, so you can write.

What do you do to get inspired to write? Share your favorite ways to be inspired in the comments below. See you there!