Arts and Entertainment > Use Your Reading To Boost the Opportunities, Excitement and Experience in Your Life
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Raven H
From Fiction to Fact.
There are a number of ways for you to have experiences. You can have them directly: for example, go to Zanzibar. Or you can talk to other people about Zanzibar, perhaps even some who've gone themselves. You can watch a documentary or a play about Zanzibar. You can lie on your back in your garden and with only the power of your imagination create a fantasy version of what Zanzibar is like. Or, you can read about it.
Then the really interesting part comes from what you do with that direct, indirect or imaginary experience. Does it inspire you to anything? To think or feel or act differently than before?
It is this idea that you can do something with your experience that has the potential to make small to significant change in your life.
What do you want?
Don't be fooled by the apparent lesser value of indirect or imaginary experience. Such experience can be as powerful as the real thing, if you let it. Let's say you read about Zanzibar, and the writing is quality stuff placing you there in the market place, in a local's home, on the road out of town in the heat and dust. It will have you feeling and if you want, thinking.
Well, thinking what? That you want to go to Zanzibar? That you want to work for a company that builds infrastructure in developing companies? That you want to take on charity work? That you want to introduce African cooking into your family's diet and will take a course?
Some people say reading is a passive pleasure, a passive entertainment. But that's not all it is, unless you let it go at that. If you want more…..! You can have more. It's a choice and it's up to you. What do you want? Do you want more? If you read crime novels, are you interested in the vicarious pleasure of imagining being a private detective, or does it prompt you to become one?
Perhaps nothing that drastic. Yet perhaps, as part of your book club's experience you might organize to have a detective or a forensics officer come out to speak to you. Or you could organize for some of you to stand in on the examination of an old crime scene, or some inorganic evidence, or photographs of such. Maybe your city cemetery runs theme tours of criminals or celebrities or murdered celebrities buried there.
Upgrade your personal characteristics.
Let's try a different tack. What about all those juicy characters in the novels you read? Are there some you'd like to be? Maybe there are certain characteristics you'd like to try on? Let's put aside destructive stuff. Leave that for your writing ventures. Maybe you'd like to be rich? Set a goal, work up a plan, get to it. What about someone with more flare, humor, confidence, cool? Identify what you want, dot point how you'll become that, get on with it. How does the character do it?
Sometimes we see the stuff we want so often in a fantasy context that we forget it can be other than a fantasy. You can be Ms Cool. You can be a private eye. You can become the crime liaison officer between your book club and all the key investigative personnel in town.
Is there a danger in doing this? Are there advantages and disadvantages? Possibly, depending on you, your mental state, your desires. But if you're a regular reader, with a penchant for something fun, or something that could add value to your life and even others', weigh it up as per usual and act on it. That's how we bring anything new into our lives. It starts with an idea, big or small. Whatever it is, remember it's all about adding value to your life and maybe even beyond that. And it may give you more bang for our buck when you read your next book.
Raven H is a publisher of crime fiction and a qualified and registered private detective. Her Crime Zine includes short stories, flash, serials and articles for readers and writers. Submissions welcome. Unsubscribe at will.
http://www.Seismicfish.com
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