What keeps you awake at night?

Welcome to today's issue of The Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine. The e-zine of Motivateme: Breaking the Procrastination Habit. http://www.motivateme.info. Have you signed up for your daily dose yet?
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What makes a story so compelling that you can stay up most of the night turning pages? You know the story is one that resides in the mind of the author. The places he or she describes may exist in reality, but not the events that are purported to revolve around them. What draws you in, what motivates you to continue reading long past the time you should be asleep dreaming of your own long-forgotten plans?

It's a long time since I've read any fiction. A long time since I've felt the need to enter into the mind of another writer. The world of another writer. But for once I am glad to put aside the techno babble that has kept me stuck to my computer like the proverbial limpet for the past weeks, no make that months. I feel like I've been suffocating in a pit of legalese, and one that I can happily now relinquish for a far more exciting realm. It makes me want to pick up my own pen and re-trace the many steps i've taken to write (or should I say partially write) the many novels that used to careen through my mind.
Why the change of heart? Why fiction? Why now? Well apart from finishing the latest edition of the Australian Record Retention Manual (a sure fire way to beat insomnia even if I do say so myself), I went to a writers forum last Wednesday. Two publishers, 2 poets and a psychologist who publishes his own work (can psychology be classed as Vanity Publishing these days?).
The biggest thing for me was a comment they all made at various times throughout the evening - not enough writers are readers. Now I am constantly reading, filtering, disseminating the information that I find. It is what I do, it is what I feel I am good at. But read poetry? Not since I was forced to read the Canterbury Tales in Original Olde English at High School. I seem to have an aversion to rhyme - which makes me wonder why I write it really!! And fiction - I stopped making time to read it, which is interesing because it's also about the same time I stopped writing it too.
So, wandering around a local conglomerate at lunchtime yesterday I walked around the book shelves. What surprised me was I didn't recognise many of the authors (oops and me a librarian - albeit non practising) let alone the titles. When did I lose track of what the publishers wanted anyway?
Well what do they want?
The same they've always wanted if the publishers were speaking the truth - well written words that convey a message to the reader, and even better if the reader doesn't need to sleep - it means the author did his job well.

What would you give up sleep for? What motivates you to spend countless hours crafting and honing  a skill that would leave your "readers" wanting more? What excites you? It is the answer to these questions that will determine where you will end up and where you should be - if you're not there already.

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