On being a reader instead of a writer

I consider myself to be a "reader" in the sense that it is an activity that I enjoy and pursue daily. I read very widely but for the last twenty-five years or so I have primarily read non-fiction. Prior to that it was almost exclusively fiction, especially Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The problem that I have with this is that I do feel that there is a cognitive benefit to the process of actually writing down the thoughts and ideas that reading books generates. I think that it helps your brain to organize what you have read and synthesize connections to pre-existing information in your head. I have trouble stopping reading in order to write.

Writing book reviews is sometimes helpful, because it forces you to pause and summarize what you have read. What I find is that, after having read a book, I am sort of still mulling it over in my mind while I am moving on to the next book. I often am reading several...perhaps as many as 8 to 10 books at a time, and often the topics are complimentary so I am waiting to finish one or more books because they generally influence my thoughts one way or another about other books that I have read or actually reading.

One of the reasons for writing this Blog is that I am hoping that I will be able to write about broader themes that may incorporate the thoughts on several books at a time. I am currently exploring broader topics just to get them out of my system and to set some groundwork. Even in this I have troubles. For instance I wanted to write a post regarding scientific models and to do that I needed to write about analogies and metaphors, and so on. While I mull over what I am going to write, I start researching and reading and now I find myself with a new block of reading on these subjects and I can't get to the writing part again.

I think that I have to focus on smaller topics and write my way through them a little more. I have to force myself to write every day on some topic, no matter how small and then let things develop from there. Hopefully I can also develop my "writing muscles" both the ones in my head that have to get working and the ones in my wrist that get fatigued from typing.