Central Texas is dry. Right now, it’s spectacularly dry, in the grip of a years-long drought that has climatologists talking earnestly about a repeat of the Dust Bowl. We had a storm dump four inches of rain about a week ago; the ground soaked it all up. The reservoirs are 27 feet below full—instead of having nearly four years’ worth of water in them, they have about a year and a half. It won’t be long before the landscape reverts to its sere summer brown.

My own drought isn’t as severe or as far-reaching. I’ve been working and busy with chores and working on behind-the-scenes grownup stuff. I’ve managed to keep my blog updated. What I haven’t managed since April is much work on Ghosts of the Old City. My reservoirs are running low. When I go to work on it, I enjoy what I see. I can wring out a few paragraphs at a time. Then the well is dry and I have to wait until opportunity and desire again intersect.

Two things have been missing: reading and sleep. Sleep is probably the one with the most import, simply because it colors so much of my days and my mood. Lack of it makes it easier to sink into wasting my waking hours and suffering mood swings. It’s also contributed to the resurgence of my cold, which hasn’t helped.

I’m missing reading more, though. I’ve read plenty, but most of my reading these last few weeks has been internet stuff: newspaper articles, blog posts, usw. As metaphorical rain, they’re barely enough to keep the grass from dying. Replenishing the reservoirs takes sustained reading, away from a screen, away from habitual clicking over to a game or social media every few minutes. It takes the energy to focus on something once the kids are in bed.

Writers constantly tell their aspiring counterparts to read. There’s a practical level to that: the more you read, the more tricks you learn to spot and pull off yourself. The more you read, the better sense you develop for the subtleties of language. You find stuff to steal and build into your own style. Those are all good reasons. None of them are enough to make the absence of reading a drought.

It’s not the how that needs renewal. It’s the why. Lack of reading dries us out because reading makes us feel. It makes us think. When we read to replenish our stores as writers, we’re replenishing our love for words and stories. We’re remembering what it means to be transported, for doors to open and stars to align. That’s the stuff that feeds us at the root.

The skies are grey this morning. The clouds aren’t dark enough to hold much threat of rain. The trees don’t stir. The forecast for the long weekend is much more amenable to sunscreen and swimming pools than drought relief. Schools—both my kids’ and the one where I teach—are descending into the whirlwind of end-of-year events. There’s a birthday party to go to on Saturday. There will be laundry and dishes and another attempt to deal with some broken blinds.

But there will also be sleeping in and reading and breakfasts that don’t come as a prelude to prying my kids out of bed. By Monday, maybe I’ll be ready to grow my writing roots again and get back to my draft of Ghosts of the Old City.