[HPforGrownups] Reading

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 3275

voicelady at mymailstation.com wrote:

> On Tue, 10 October 2000, Peg Kerr wrote:
>
> > Once, I tried a week of reading deprivation, at the suggestion of _The Artist's Way_, a book on creativity, just to see what it was like.
>
> Quit reading for a week?!?  No, thank you very much!  I'm one of those read-at-least-3-books-at-a-time people.  And if fanfiction counts as "books", up that number to 6!
>
> So, what was the premise of the book's suggestion?  That reading helps or hinders creativity?
>

>From _The Artist's Way_: (see pp. 87-89)

"If you feel stuck in your life or your art, few jump starts are more effective
than a week of reading deprivation.

No reading?  That's right: no reading.  For most artists, words are like tiny
tranquilizers.  We have a daily dose of media chat that we swallow up.  Like
greasy food, it clogs our systems.  Too much of it and we feel, yes, fried.

It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually
filling the well.  Without distractions, we are once again thrust in the
sensory world.  With no newspaper to shield us, a train becomes a viewing
gallery.  With no novel to sink into (and no television to numb us out) an
evening becomes a vast savannah in which furniture--and other assumptions--get
rearranged.

Reading deprivation casts us into our inner silence, a space some of us begin
immediately to fill with new words--long, gossipy conversations, television
bingeing, the radio as constant, chatty companion.  We often cannot hear our
inner voice, the voice of our artist's inspiration, above the static.  In
practicing reading deprivation, we need to cast a watchful eye on these other
pollutants.  They poison the well.

If we monitor the inflow and keep it to a minimum, we will be rewarded for our
reading deprivation with embarrassing speed.  Our reward will be a new
outflow.  Our own art, our own thoughts and feelings, will begin to nudge aside
the sludge of blockage, to loosen it and move it upward and outward until once
again our well is running freely.

Reading deprivation is a very powerful tool--and a very frightening one.  Even
thinking about it can bring up enormous rage.  For most blocked creatives,
reading is an addiction.  We gobble the words of others rather than digest our
own thoughts and feelings , rather than cook up something of our own. . . . "

Peg

P.S.  if anyone is moved to try this, I'd be interested in how the experience
went for you.  For me, the whole week was an unpleasant and rather unnerving, but eye-opening experience.

P.P.S.  And you know, the author of _The Artist's Way_ has a point.  Voicelady, I think, has uttered a gentle complaint that I'm not working on my next book.  Part of the
problem is that I spend too much time reading this listserve!