Sometimes Writing. Always Reading.
Just busy. I haven’t been able to get much writing done over the last month, thanks to a hectic fall schedule (why do I always forget how busy September can be?).
I have managed to read Cheryl Klein‘s The Magic Words this month though. I’ll try to get a post up about it soon – it’s given me many revision ideas, so I may have more to say about the WIP as well.
I recently finished Points of Departure: Liavek Stories by Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean. Liavek, the world in which these stories are set , was created by a group of authors (I think seven; the group included Wrede and Dean, anyway) in the 1980s; this collaborative venture produced 5 collections (all currently out of print). I’d heard of the original anthologies, but I never managed to get a hold of any of them. So when I saw some of the original Liavek stories had been re-issued I was eager to read them.
I enjoyed the anthology as a whole (rare for me; I’m not much of a short-story reader), but I think its strength really is the complex, colorful world of Liavek. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how a group of authors could create a world together, and write so consistently (at least in the Wrede and Dean stories I read) of it. For me, world-building is really an act of discovery. I know a couple of things about the world and I learn more as I write.
But to create a world as a group, one would have to know more about the world before writing, I would think. Or, if one had a writing group and were sharing stories with them regularly, could it be an organic process in the same way as discovering a world solo?
The wonderful flurry of reading I experienced in May has trickled off. For the last week or so, I’ve been in a reading lull.
It’s not that I’ve been too busy with other things. Nor am I waiting on the next books on the list to come in at the library, or anything like that. And though I have been writing again (finally! hooray!), it’s not that I can’t read because I don’t want to lose the fictional world I’m writing in. (Though I am beginning to get to this place…)
No, it’s merely that I’m in a reading funk, the literary equivalent of a bad mood. I haven’t been able to get in to any of the books I’ve tried these past days, and so I’ve wound up casting them aside. In some cases, it’s been the book’s fault. But most of my reading problems recently have, I think, been just me.
What to do when this happens? In the past I’ve occasionally been able to snap myself out of it by re-reading a favorite. Re-reading hasn’t worked this time, though – I wind up casting even my favorites aside.
So I’ve been reading cookbooks. Here are a few that I’ve enjoyed while in this lull:
Of course it’s too hot to cook these days…maybe that’s why this is working for me right now. I can simply read and fantasize!
Two weeks ago I plunged into my summer reading pile, and it’s been…satisfying. Incredibly, unusually, remarkably satisfying. While I’ve attempted a few books that I abandoned mid-read, or that I finished but had significant problems with, most of what I’ve picked up have been winners.
Here are a few that I’ve read and particularly enjoyed:
Either a lot of good books are coming out these days, or I did an especially good job on my 2016 summer reading list. Or maybe it’s just luck of the draw?
Back to reading!
For me, the power of fiction (and a lot of non-fiction too) is that it tells a universal truth through the particular – through an individual, or collection of individuals.
Marketing, on the other hand, seems most often to be about generalizations – guessing what most people (be they a category of people, or people in general) will like. I’ve had a problem, personally, with generalizations about people for – well, for as long as I remember. They make me feel like the last kid chosen for the team; they make me feel like I don’t belong.
I’ve known this about myself for a long time. Usually I try not to worry about generalizations and instead just get on with my life. But the business of publishing has to think about marketing. And I, in my search to publish, got hoodwinked into thinking about “marketability” as part of my writing, about “what readers like.” I was told thinking about the industry would make me a better writer, and I bought it.
I was wrong. This kind of thinking killed my ability to write for a while there. It also killed my ability to read. And worst of all, it made me feel like an alien in my own life. Every time I read, a voice in my head would be asking, over and over, “Is this publishable? Why?” Every time I wrote, I felt alone in a sea of faceless generalizations. And more and more that feeling spilled into my everyday life.
So I stopped. I stopped reading industry news; I stopped worrying about being published. And it took a while, but I’m recovering. I can read, and write, again. I may never publish. That’s ok with me.
Not every piece of advice out there works for everyone.
Some of these are recommendations, some are things I’ve been wanting to read for a while, some are rereads. The list grows.
The list is in no particular order.
Most of these are sci-fi/fantasy…where my taste is trending these days. Most are NOT young adult, a deliberate decision (and something I’ll write a post about when I can get my thoughts in some kind of coherent order.)
Oh and, on the cookbook front, the 2016 James Beard Awards were just announced. I put some of the awardees/nominees on my list too:
It’s been a long hard winter here. Spring is usually not my favorite season – in New Mexico it means wind, and lots of it – but this year it has arrived like the promise of a better world. Which it is: I am moving into a season in which I should be less busy, and more open.
In celebration of the new season, I’m making my list for summer reading – another promise of better times to come! I can’t wait to dive into the pile of books that awaits me, and discover a new world.
I’ll be posting reactions to what I’m reading in the coming weeks/months. In the meantime, I welcome all suggestions of books to add to the list!
Holidays are when I catch up on my pleasure reading. I have a big stack of things to read over the next two weeks (and can’t wait to do so). But here are a few of the books I read and enjoyed earlier this year, in no particular order.
Warning: this list is almost certainly incomplete. I should probably start doing periodic lists of stuff I’ve recently enjoyed, if only to keep track of what I’ve been reading for myself….
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
Tales from Rugosa Coven by Sarah Avery
The Snow Globe by Jenna Nelson
A really awesome ms. for a friend (can’t wait to see this one in print!)