A Rant about Reading (and an Ode to YouTube)

I know I’ve mentioned this at least once, but I really don’t have time to read. I’ve got about 25 crisp new books, but not a minute to read them. This makes me sad. I would love to dive into Wicked or one of the dozens of new writer’s reference books I picked up last year, but my timeline looks something like this:

10+ hours of classes and homework
Various weekend hours, which are inevitably spent running errands, writing, or wasting an inestimable amount of time on YouTube.

And those seventy-some pages I managed to stuff into my current novel were the product of several weekends not infiltrated by YouTube. But so I don’t bore/annoy you with complaints about why I don’t have time to read, let me express my gratitude to said online labyrinth of videos for becoming a much needed online library. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without YouTube. I would say about 60 percent of all my ideas came from watching videos of people playing games (and a few random videos here and there). Probably 30 percent comes from movies and the last ten from books. YouTube is my homework helper, and provides me with inspiration at the same time. If you think about it, there are some great old games that have some decent stories out there. I would even hazard that some video games have better stories than some “bestsellers” (Yeah, that’s right, I’m looking at you, Twilight).

Maybe the summertime will provide opportunities to read all those wonderful tomes I’ve collected. For now, I think I’ll stick to the inspirational goldmine that is YouTube. In fact, if you’re struggling to find inspiration yourself, search YouTube for videos of your interests. You never know what you’ll find–or where your next idea will come from.