No reading!!!

So, part of the Week 4 activities in The Artist's Way is to give up reading for one week. Julia Cameron admits that this will be difficult, but is doable if you make the effort. Frankly, I think it would be impossible to not keep up with my emails, it's just something that I MUST do for work these days. Also, I'm finishing up another book, which means I have to read what I've written in order to complete the final revisions. I can't afford to take a week off from that project. So, instead of giving up reading, I won't be reading for pleasure, and I won't be listening to the radio in the car or at home, and I won't be watching any TV or movies, and I won't be playing any video games. No surfing the web either. Basically, I think Ms. Cameron wanted to cut out reading because so many artists, especially writers, fill up their downtime with reading. Instead, I think she wants us all to spend our downtime in silence or cleaning or sprucing up our creative space or walking, anything other than reading. I'm allowing myself to read emails, and to read my creative writing for editing purposes, and to do this blog, but I'm cutting out all other time-fillers. That's going to be extremely hard for me since I always have an audio book going in my car as well as one that I listen to while I'm doing things around the house, which means I constantly have two books on the go in my head. Plus, I love to relax at the end of the day in front of the boobtube. However, if I'm going to do this right, I've got to give this a whirl, which I've been doing for about 24 hours. And you know what, it's hard. The silence has become noisy. To fill that emptiness I've started talking to myself. The good news is, a lot of that chatting involves me working out the start of the book I plan to start writing in November. I'll keep you posted on the trials and tribulations of my "reading" hiatus.