Becca Rowan's Blog

The Challenge Year

About 20 years ago I started keeping track of the books I read in a book journal, usually a 5x7 hardcover lined notebook. It wasn’t a particularly elegant system - I simply listed the title and author of the book, using a separate page for each month. If the book was a particular favorite, I might jot an asterisk beside it; if it was the second (or third or fourth!) time I’d read it, I would note that too. At the end of each month, I totaled the number of books read during that time, and at the end of the year, I skimmed through the year’s reading and made a “favorites” list.

One journal lasts a long time, and I’m about to fill up my third such little book. Of course I’ve kept them all, and it’s fun to look back and see when I read the most (usually July) and the least (usually December). That very first journal has some scribbling on the back pages, and I clearly remember letting my friend Karen's daughter draw in the book when we were having lunch together one day and talking about books as we were wont to do.

That daughter is now ready to graduate from college.

For 2015 I decided to record my reading in a new way. I began keeping track of my books on Goodreads, noting when I started and finished each one, rating them, and often writing a short review, mostly to jog my own memory about the book. I continued to write them all down in my book journal, simply because I’ll always prefer “hard copies” to digital versions of anything. But overall I’m enjoying the Goodreads experience, and will continue it into 2016.

For most all of these 20 years I’ve been keeping track of my reading life, I’ve read an average of 75-85 books every year. When I started my Goodreads account last December, I decided to challenge myself to read 100 books in 2015. It didn’t seem as if it should be that hard to read another 20 books more than usual.

And it wasn’t. I hit the 100 mark early last week, and I’m hoping to make it to 110 before the end of this month (despite the fact that December is historically a low reading month).

But the whole “Challenge” concept put an interesting spin on the way I read. I didn’t necessarily read faster - in fact, I think I read more thoughtfully than I had in the past. Nor did I read more indiscriminately - there were still a few books that I set aside because after the first 50-75 pages I could tell they weren’t for me. What I did do was plan out more reading time. I made sure to keep my book handy, so I could read when dinner was cooking or whenever I had a few minutes during the day. I carried my book around with me, taking it to doctor appointments, even to restaurants if I thought I might have a wait time before meeting a friend. I read more instead of scrolling through Facebook or Twitter. I read while sitting on the couch beside my husband as he watched car racing or soccer - or anything else that wasn’t interesting enough to distract me!

“Challenging" myself made my reading more purposeful. In a way, the challenge validated my reading life - because even though I love to read and count reading as one of my favorite pastimes, I still feel twinges of Puritan guilt about sitting down to read in the middle of the day; or reading when I could be writing or practicing; or reading when I could be walking the dogs; or reading when I should be doing some other household chore like laundry or meal planning or vacuuming.

So yes, as well as continuing to keep track of books on Goodreads, I will again challenge myself in 2016, this time to read 125 books; additionally, just to make things a little more interesting, I challenge myself to read a book from one of these categories each month: a work of classic literature; a book in translation; or a nonfiction book other than memoir. I’m currently collating a list of books to choose from in those categories.

Life can be challenging enough these days, and sometimes I shy away from imposing any more challenges upon myself. But the reading challenge was a positive experience all around, and I’m looking forward to an exciting new year of reading.

If you’re on Goodreads, connect with me here.

Write On Wednesday: On Desire

“I think you should write another book,” my mother said to me the other day when I started to whine about the long winter days with nothing fun to do. In fact, I almost uttered the “B” word, that one which never passes my lips. (Bored? Me?? Hardly.)

“Well, it’s not that simple,” I replied a bit peevishly. “It takes a lot of work to write a book from scratch."

“I’m sure it does,” she replied. “But you’ve already done it once, I imagine you could do it again if you really wanted to."

I opened my mouth to answer back, then closed it again. She was right, of course. Darn mothers anyway, always knowing their stuff like that.

I COULD DO IT IF I REALLY WANTED TO.

In my very small way, I’ve been stricken with second book syndrome. Life In General turned out to be a surprising and gratifying little success. And although I’ve had ideas for another book gnawing at me for a couple of years, and had plans to commence working on it as soon as Life In General was out in the world, I haven’t made a dent in it. Truth? I’m afraid. Afraid this one won’t turn out as well. Afraid to start from the beginning. Afraid of the kinds of things I might have to confront in order to tell this story. Afraid I don’t have the talent or the self discipline it takes to tell it at all.

Perhaps a more appropriate title for this post would be On Fear.

Fear and Desire are yoked together in my writing world these days. It reminds of times when I’m walking the dogs and they are out ahead of me at the end of their long leashes - suddenly they will pull up right against one another, their sides actually rubbing, and walk for 100 feet or so as if stuck to each other with velcro. Then one of them (usually Magic) will pull away and take the lead and leave the other behind. But for a moment it’s as if they need the security of being side-by-side on this adventure, of knowing the other one is there.

Fear is not always unhealthy. Knowing what we’re afraid of helps have the strength to overcome it. But Desire. Well that is the fuel for every fire, be it making a book, falling in love, raising a child, painting a room, cooking a meal.

You have to Want It. Really Want It.

Beth Kephart, whose book Handling the Truth is my study guide these days, reminds me that “we can only write toward our obsession.” In her blog post the other day, she describes thinking about a new book as a “strange existence of wading through the formidable dark toward a fledgling, heartbreaking story.”

It can’t be about Fear. It must be about Desire. Compulsion. Obsession. An itch to tell the story. “The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper - whether little or great, it belongs to literature.” (Sarah Orne Jewett). It’s not only a willingness but a need to wander into the forest of memory and experience and truth.

So I need to turn those fearful thoughts on their head, pull them away from my side where they’ve been rubbing me the wrong way and holding me back. Let Desire take the lead. Scratch that itch to tell a story, the one that’s been teasing me every since I was a little girl. Let myself be obsessed with it.

Really Want It.

And then Do It.

Time Travel

I read a lot of historical fiction, and the best of it transports me to another place and acquaints me with people whose ideas and experiences and lifestyles are very different from mine.

This week’s reading is doing all of that.

I started the week with Sarah Waters new novel of psychological suspense, The Paying Guests. Set in post WWI London, this hefty tome starts out slowly but builds to a fever pitch of understated tension that doesn’t lift until the very last pages. Waters does a masterful job of creating atmosphere - the dark grittiness of London streets amidst the roiling undercurrent of dissolving class levels perfectly sets the scene for this novel built around crimes of passion. sometimes found it uncomfortable reading, but I was compelled by it all the same... which is the mark of a good writer, isn’t it?

After finishing it, I headed straight to the library to look out more of Waters books. I brought home The Night Watch, but was equally thrilled to find a copy of Vanessa and Her Sister, a novel by Priya Parmar about Vanessa Stephen Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf. I thought this would make a good diversion from more of Waters’ brand of suspense, and eagerly dove in.

What a delight this is proving to be! Parmar chose to write in Vanessa's voice in the form of diary entries, interspersed with letters and postcards back and forth between all the members of the Bloomsbury group. Having read all of Virginia’s diaries, as well as most of her collected letters, I love voice Parmar has created for Vanessa - warm, loving, but clever and honest. Vanessa is the de facto mother figure for her two brothers and her sister, and Virginia’s episodes of crippling mental illness are always on her mind. “It hangs over my head like Damocles’ sword,” writes Vanessa on the eve of her wedding to Clive Bell, "that Virginia will go mad.”

Because I’ve found Parmar’s novel so infectious, I’ve was drawn to my own bookshelves and to my old copy of Virginia Woolf, A Biography, published by her nephew Quentin Bell in 1972. Because this book is divided into years, it’s easy to follow along with the biography during the years of the novel. So I get the “authorized” version along with the novelized version.

True literary geek fun, I guess. But on a dark, damp Sunday morning in February, with a fire glowing, coffee brewing, and two snoring dogs at my feet, there’s probably nothing I’d enjoy much more.

Reading Robinson

Gilead, Home, Lila...for the past two weeks I’ve been living with Marilynne Robinson’s characters in these three novels set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa. My heart has ached with them as they look for grace in their lives and relationships. I’ve rejoiced with them over small moments of warmth and closeness. I've pondered with them - why do things happen the way they do? What does it mean to forgive? How do we learn to trust ourselves and the people who profess to love us?

I have to confess. I first read Gilead and Home about three years ago, and was not in love with them. They both seemed so heavy and introspective. I needed more to happen.

My reaction bothered me. I had heard so much praise for Robinson’s body of work. She is a writer’s writer, I heard. All the readers and writers I respect most love and study her work.

It seems she is an oracle. Why did this book fail to move me?

So when I heard about Lila, the third novel in this grouping that would focus on the woman who married Reverend John Ames of Gilead, the novel that would tell Lila's hard scrabble story and reveal how a young woman drifted in off the street, ended up married to a much, much older man and bearing him a son, I decided to tackle the other two books again. In preparation.

This time around, I got it. All of it. The reasons writers especially love Marilynne Robinson. The things this woman does with words and ideas, the way she forces the reader to just slooooooow down, savor and ponder every sentence - it is a master class in going deep. These are very spiritual books, they delve into topics of faith and grace and fate, of honoring mothers and fathers and family history. Of being a good neighbor and a good steward of gifts.

They are not books to read when you’re waiting in the doctor’s office. They are not books to read while lying on the beach.

They seem best read in a quiet room while the fireplace crackles and sputters, with maybe a cup of coffee close at hand. Or sitting on a long front porch overlooking a grassy meadow, while birds sing on the wires and wind shushes through the pines. In a place where you can sit and be still. Where you can read without the distractions of modern life.

Reading all three of these books together is like being baptized in the River Robinson. It’s a total immersion baptism. And I’m coming up refreshed and renewed, just as it should be.

Write On Wednesday: Going Deep

“The risk of writing is an internal risk. You brave the depths of your being and then bring it up for commentary by the world. Not the work of wimps.” Laraine Herring, Writing Begins With the Breath

A friend who read Life In General had this to say: “I loved your book, Becca, but there were times when I wanted more of the story, times I felt like I wanted you to expand it into even more directions, emotionally and literally.”

At first I was tempted to defend the short essays which fill the book, reminding her they were all originally blog posts that are, by nature, small slices of life and not meant to be long-form essays.

But I didn’t.

Because deep down, I know she’s right.

I recognize it myself - I come to a certain place in the writing, a crossroads in effect, when I could either stop traveling or continue on into the unknown. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I stop dead in my tracks. It’s visceral sensation, a need to jump up and hurry away from the keyboard, put down the pen and close the notebook.

It’s fear, plain and simple.

As Laraine Herring says, “the risk of writing is internal. You can’t really prepare yourself for what’s in there, because you don’t know all of what’s in there.” Writing unearths ideas and emotions and opinions we aren’t always aware of. Sometimes these are uncomfortable. Sometimes they are empowering.

They are often revelatory. They are always surprising.

“When I coach students through essay writing,” says Anna Qundlen, in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, “I invariably give the same direction: go deeper, go deeper. In each iteration, reveal more, of who you truly are, of what you really think.” It’s like opening a series of beautiful nested boxes. Each one contains something unexpected. Each one takes you a little step deeper into the inner earth of your soul. As you lift the lid, you run the risk of exposing something you aren’t quite sure how to handle.

So yes, “going deep” into the psyche is scary, and I’ve never pretended toward intrepidity. But I believe another factor in my tendency to stop short is a fear of inadequacy: not only as a writer, but also as a thinker. I’m not sure I possess the kind of analytical mindset required to process complex issues in writing. I shy away from the kind of deep thought necessary to plumb the furthest depths of an emotion or an issue, and stay on the surface where things are simpler.

Where will I find the courage and the ingenuity to take my writing and my thinking to this next level?

Two words: Focus and Stillness.

“There is so little time for stillness in the everyday world,” I wrote in Life In General. “We itch to fill every second with stimulation, entertainment or productivity, and modern technology gives us a million opportunities to do just that."

A friend and I were talking about the concept of children and boredom. She said that on the rare occasions her son complained of boredom, she would remind him how lucky he was. “Now you have an opportunity to really choose what you’d like to do, even if it’s just sitting down and watching people go by.”

It’s the quality of quiet contemplation that I lack: the ability to slow down, observe, wonder. To think about what I’ve read or listened to, heard or seen. And it isn’t as if I don’t have time - my time is mostly my own these days and the hours in front of me are often spacious (at least in comparison to many people I know). It’s mostly that I feel the siren call of busyness, the urge to do something “productive,” one that is provocative and pervasive in my life, as I imagine it is in yours.

Again, it’s like opening the nested boxes, looking at the deeper meaning of each level of experience.

That sounds kind of intense, does’t it?

I’ve been re-reading Marilynne Robinson’s novels Gilead and Home, preparatory to reading her latest, Lila. These three novels are nested beautifully together, each one delving deep into the experiences of two families in a small Iowa town in the 1950’s at a particular slice of time. Robinson is a writer who forces her reader to slow down and focus. Her writing is stately and diligent. It unfolds ideas about grace and faith and fealty in powerful language that begs re-reading. I cannot imagine a woman who writes this way as anything other than one who moves slowly and thoughtfully through the world, leaving little trace of herself on the modern thoroughfares of social media or public acclaim. Yet she is fearless about exploring the hunger and thirst of the soul. She ponders questions that pertain to us all: where do we find the grace to forgive ourselves or those who have disappointed us? how does faith matter in our relationships with family and friends? what constitutes a life well lived?

She is one who goes deep, and perhaps can begin to teach me how it’s done. Reading these books, reading them slowly as this author mandates by her writing style, is such a pleasure, especially on these cold and snowy winter days that seem perfect for slowing down and savoring the stillness outside my windows.

As I think about the new writing I want to do this year, I know I must move forward to that next level my friend urged me toward. I’ll have to “brave the depths of my being” to explore a larger panorama of my life, seek more details from my memories, and unearth some of those emotions that, until now, I’ve left by the side of the road.

How about you? Do you eagerly open the nested boxes containing your deepest thoughts and fears? Or do you leave them closed tightly by the side of the road?

Write On Wednesday: What’s Next?

Long ago on another blog far away, I held a weekly writer’s roundtable every Wednesday. It was anchored by a short essay, and I invited writers to weigh in on the topic of the day. Connections were created around this table. It was where I first met Andi Cumbo Floyd, Jeanie Croope, Kerstin Martin - women with whom I continue to draw inspiration for creative work (not just writing).

Since Life In General was published, I’ve been thinking about what’s next for me in this writing practice which I depend upon, and I thought it might be fun to explore that in a new series of Write on Wednesday posts. For the past two years my writing goals were focused on putting Life In General together. It was a satisfying process and a superb learning experience. Publishing it put a cap on eight years worth of writing and tied it up nice and neatly.

But Life Goes On. That’s the theme that seems to be emerging for my online writing, the essays I write here on this blog. How do I use what I’ve learned in this decade of my 50’s and go forward with it into my 60’s? You know those guiding principles I talk about in the Afterword of Life In General? How are they working out for me as life moves forward? How will they help me handle the inevitable changes yet to come?

Beyond that, though, I feel an urgency to try something new, to start from scratch on writing something that might turn into another book. I’ve hinted at it here from time to time, I’ve made a few false starts and even have part of a “shitty rough draft.” It’s a topic that fascinates me, that makes me ponder family legacy and how it affects our personalities and the choices we make for our own lives. It’s also about roads not taken, and how our lives are steered by what we don’t do as much as what we do.

But there is much work ahead, and much to think about. I’m reading a lot right now, reading even more memoirs than I usually do (which is saying a lot). But I’m reading them with an eye to form and structure and voice, rather than immersing myself solely in the story. I’m studying books about writing memoir, starting with my friend Beth Kephart’s challenging text Handling the Truth. And it is challenging me - to think and re-think every early assumption I made about this project, with an eye on the “universal question” within which to frame it.

But it’s all good. I’m not in a hurry.

It feels like a hike in the wilderness on a cool spring day. A fresh breeze tingles on my skin, clouds scuttle across the blue sky above, my feet crackle and crunch on the forest path, one step after the next, my gait steady but unhurried. The day is long, there is plenty of sunlight, and much to see and hear. I’m simply enjoying the walk.

That’s what’s next for me.

Writer and artist friends: What’s next for you?