“Where in this limited world did this author get this crazily thrilling idea!” you may hear several readers and intending writers wonder. “How in the world could he have woven a simple theme into a very phenomenal piece?”
Perhaps those are the questions your favourite author asked themselves before they squeezed that bestselling book out of their head. Where would they get the muse to amuse the reader?
Although many points from which to derive inspiration are possible, the most natural one, which will not require you to head into those unproven superstitious sessions of waiting for an inspiration from the literary ancestors and spirits, is to take accomplished writers and their works as standing examples for your progress.
An empty mind cannot give birth to ideas. So, the way to have a pregnant mind is to take in. From already accomplished writers, one has a lot more than just an inspiration to take in. Books written by different people, even authors who are still in obscurity, can expand the mind a great deal by exposing it to how wide the world of the pen and book can be.
While one man may think that what can be written about is only contained in the world in which we exist, a writer can disprove that by writing about the celestial vastness. While one man may think that life is limited to things that are capable of breath, a writer can create a whole new setting where non-living bodies are given life characteristics. While one man may think that a general truth has to be understood in a certain way and not any other, another writer can expand the whole subject in a novel elaboration.
Reading is the best exercise for a would-be great writer. It is through reading that the mind is fed. It is through reading that the space of the intellect is expanded. Some people have not discovered how capable they would be at writing about different subjects until they had that capable spirit in them highlighted by a certain book they read until they were pushed forward by seeing how another writer drove the plot down in their book.
But take care, a prudent reader is so different from a plagiarist! A prudent reader reads to learn, not to copy and paste.
Reading is like the portal through which a writer can explore through other writers’ creativity. And as they learn of the creativity employed by other authors, they can be capable of polishing the little capability that is there in them until they reach the level they desire to achieve.
