A recent post about why writers should read on FWJ wasn’t news to me – I’ve always presumed that all good writers must also be good readers. But I had an unusual experience last week, which put me off my regular evening reading session for a couple of days.

I’m an avid reader. I read on the train and the bus, in my lunch break if no colleagues are around to chat to, at night before I go to sleep, and anywhere I have time to kill – there’s always a book in every bag I take out of the house.

But last week, I got to bed, picked up my book, and I just couldn’t. It wasn’t the book’s fault: Francis Mayes’ A Year in the World- a pleasant enough travel narrative that I happily read, even if it didn’t absolutely thrill me. Well, in a way, it was the book’s fault. Almost every word, every noun and adjective and verb, was leading my brain down all kinds of inspired paths of ideas. I was over-inspired.

I’d spent much of that day either talking about fiction writing or actually doing some fiction writing. The creative part of my brain was on high alert. I had ideas for short stories, novels, blogs, travel articles; I was just waiting for the meaning of life to pop in there too. I just couldn’t switch off. But I wanted to. I needed a break, and a good night’s sleep.

So there I was, lying in bed reading and trying to dampen down the fireworks in my brain, whenI glanced to my left: my husband was engrossed in his nightly sudoku exploits. Suddenly I understood why. I borrowed a puzzle off him and got deeply involved with putting those pesky numbers in the right squares. My inspiration stream slowed down and a bit later on, I got to sleep without too many urges to jump up and make notes.

Of course, I was a little worried that I’d wake up the next day with nothing to write about. An empty brain, full of 4-2-8-1-9-3-6-5-7 sequences. But I survived and so did my writing. It took a couple of nights of sudoku therapy before I could go back to reading.