P.J. O'Brien's Blog

Reading and Living in Corona Time

There are days when time seems stretched out. Their boundaries blur as the hours of one slip into the next. But later perhaps, those days seem to have gone by faster than one thought. I experienced time like that when going through labor and becoming adjusted to life with a newborn. I’ve also felt that when sitting up with a seriously ill family member or waiting in an airport for an indefinitely delayed flight.

Corona Time feels warped and stretchy to me too, but on a much larger scale. March seemed to last forever, but April lurched ahead and then stalled. May is galloping by. Maybe it just seems that way to me because I had a cold that I couldn’t shake for most of March. Maybe it’s because I knew in April that Covid was burrowing in worldwide and the stay-at-home orders would be needed beyond just a few weeks. I got busy thinking about how to adjust to the new normal and life without a job. It helped to see new leaves on the trees outside my windows and hear the migrating birds. But mainly I’ve been reading like mad: to research, to escape, or maybe simply to understand.

I’m coming to terms with the realization that I may never have the opportunity to work again at the same professional level or even in the same field that I had before. I may have to start all over at something new with a beginner’s compensation. I may not be able to find a job at all for a long time. I don’t feel consciously worried about it yet, but it could be that my increased reading fixation is a coping mechanism for submerged insecurities.

We still have a household income, so I’m grateful for that. (I try to begin and end each day listing the things that I’m grateful for, though I haven’t always been diligent about it.) So far, all my close family and friends are healthy. I do know people personally who have recovered from Covid-19, but they weren’t much sicker than if they had a cold.

But I also have friends who haven’t been so lucky. One lost her father, another lost her uncle, and a third lost her father-in-law. Their grief is compounded by knowing that their loved one suffered their final hours and days alone. Even a funeral to commemorate their lives and formally say goodbye was not possible.

We joked last year that 2020 was going to be the year for weddings because we had been invited to so many. One by one they’re being postponed, depending on the month scheduled and the latest death count in their state.

Reading has always inspired me to think of new ideas, to imagine new worlds, or to satisfy my curiosity about something. I hope that this will always be true. I hope that reading will also continue to offer a brief escape from the moment, as long as it remains brief. These moments of Corona Time need our attention.

I do know that the times that I feel most positive during the pandemic is when I can contribute to something good, no matter how minor. But I also know that our lives and our relationships are undergoing lasting changes along with our environmental and socio-economic conditions. Even if we manage to get this disease eradicated, it doesn’t mean there won’t be another.

While New York’s cases were increasing exponentially, the Times printed an article on those who had to say goodbye to dying loved ones from a distance. It quoted a specialist in palliative care who gave advice on what to say during a last conversation. I don’t remember all of it exactly, but it had essentially 5 key elements that she encouraged loved ones to include in this order:
1. Thank you
2. I’m sorry; please forgive me.
3. I forgive you.
4. I love you.
5. Good-bye

Obviously, those elements should be adjusted according to the context of the relationship and the circumstances. And as I learned years ago from being with my father during his latest days, it’s best to start out just listening if the dying person wants to speak first.

We’re in the process of a paradigm shift in our shared understanding of the world and our expectations for the future. To come to terms with that, we’ll need some awareness of the shift and some time to adjust. We need to find ways to say goodbye to some of our pre-pandemic expectations, hopes, and habits. I think for now, I’ll begin with those five conversation suggestions as I go through my own stages of grief: gratitude for what was, responsibility for what I did that might have caused harm, forgiveness of others who now regret their actions, a renewed commitment to love, and a letting go of what is ending. With any luck, and a lot of reading, that will allow me to join the work of the future.

Is it still hoarding if it’s electronic?

Smashwords is having its annual July summer/winter sale. In years past, I would go out every few days during the month, click on the filter for those with 100%-off coupons, and do a general browse for new additions before narrowing down to authors or topics that I liked. I didn’t load up my shopping cart every single visit; sometimes just browsing was entertaining enough. But by the end of the month, I’d have at least a dozen more books downloaded to my tablet.

I used to add the titles immediately to my Goodreads Want-to-read list, but now I don’t. I have so many in there already that I’ve had to organize a bit and tag those I want to read in a given year. I’m not saying that I have too many in my list, but I confess that I’ll sometimes read a review by a friend – or someone that I’m following – and decide to add the book to my queue, only to find that it was already in there. Is the list no longer meaningful if I can’t remember every item I’ve added? Or does that matter?

I used to worry about this. Three years ago, I wrote a post about coming to terms with having 100 books in my want-to-read list. Now I have over five times that, and that’s not including some that I’ve picked up during unexpected sales. But I don’t worry about how many are in the list now. Isn’t its function to remind us of books that seem interesting so that we don’t have to memorize them all?

And if having lists of possibilities is not a problem, why do I have a growing hesitation about adding actual books to my virtual library, especially if free or discounted? After all, I wouldn’t be able to afford them all at regular price, and the local public library’s limited funding leads it to concentrate on works for children and book clubs. Those on my list are often not available there.

Nor does having too many ebook files lead to the same tussling between wishes and practicalities that having too many physical books does. They don’t take up limited space in my house nor would they create dilemmas for my heirs when I’ve passed on.

Even so, I do find that I’m buying fewer books at drastically reduced prices than I used to, even though I’m reading just as much overall. I’m spending more time reading through online samples and previews rather than downloading them to sift through later.

Sales and freebies are helpful for trying out new authors, styles, or genres, and there is something very satisfying about getting something good at an even better price. I’m sure that there’s some psychology involved. Why else would I be very pleased to get 20% off a book by an author I like at any other month except July, but tend not to even look at books listed with a mere 25, 50, or 75% off coupon during the Smashwords sale?

I have three different devices that I can read books on, if I count my mobile phone. Depending upon the apps on each, and whether I sync them across other devices, I have anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred books available and ready to be read at any given point. I browse through them as I would my physical bookshelves when I’m in the mood to read … something … but not quite sure what. I also find it comforting to have a lot of options in case I have to wait for an appointment or when meeting someone who is late. It’s not so bad if there’s something good to read to pass the time away if I’ve suddenly finished a book.

But still, to collect too many – or even to have a sense that there is such a thing as too many – is perhaps not so good. Maybe having too many of anything lessens the value of the individual items. And solely chasing sales or bargains could be problematic in itself, especially if it drives down the ability of authors to get fairly compensated for their work and talents, or spins public libraries into a downward spiral of decreased funding because of fewer patrons, and fewer patrons because of decreased funding to broaden reading choices.

And finally, there is a concern of hoarding. I don't mean in the necessary sense like a squirrel preparing for winter, but more of piling up large numbers of items that are not needed or even thought about individually.

So, does that mean that I don’t browse through July sales or respond to a notice that a book in my reading queue is on sale? Well no, of course not. But I think I will be more deliberate in general about acquisition. I’ll continue to do more preview reading, and to use Smashwords in general as a place to discover ideas and insights that aren’t available elsewhere.

Overall, I’ll put a priority on what’s in the to-be-read list already and browse through it occasionally to remind myself about the very interesting books patiently waiting their turn. I’ll try to remember to check the library more often since its collection is available to more than just me and seems just the opposite of an individual’s hidden hoard.

As for my favorite authors, I’ll check to see that I’ve paid the full and fair price for at least one of their books, even if the others are loans, discounts, or freebies. Then I'll send my worries out to play, and settle down to browse in my miniature device library.

Hope vs Fear, Jealousy, Greed, and Ducks

If someone trustworthy made the offer, "I'll give you twice what you think you need to earn a living if you quit all other forms of income-generation and concentrate exclusively on your writing", how many of us would say a solid "No thank you!"?

Assuming I wasn’t desperately in need of money, I’m pretty sure that I would. Writing is a chore for me. I have no intrinsic happiness doing it; I'd rather read or do my day job or a half-dozen other things.

From what I’ve heard from those who would love to have such an offer, there’s a restless compulsion to write, to bring stories to life, or give characters a chance to develop beyond one’s own reveries. I can certainly understand that; I’ve felt that way too. But there must be a sense of peace and joy in writing that I simply don't have. Any time I’ve ever brought stories and ideas out of my own musing to share with others, I feel a little sad. I also feel vaguely guilty for some reason; it’s as if I’ve somehow betrayed a confidence with the characters, or not done justice to the ideas.

From my earliest memories of childhood, my imagination was always turned on and fired up. Characters wove in and out of my life, evolving and reincarnating in response to my experiences. I learned to give my attention to school, relationships, and work as needed over the years, but in my off-times and leisure, and certainly in my very vivid dreaming, characters take hold and I see the world from their perspectives.

So why did I spend several years trading sleeping hours for writing hours? It was to exorcise my distress in seeing the world, and even my community, polarizing to alarming degrees. I felt that we were losing the ability to see things from several points of view and were forcing everyone into slots of right vs left, progressive vs conservative, enemy vs friend.

I remember taking a walk in 2001 and witnessing a gang-rape and possible drowning of a young duck by a group of drakes. At first, the duck's mate had nearly exhausted himself trying to help her fight them off, but then seemed to join in the attack when it seemed inevitable that he couldn't stop them. I couldn’t stop them either. When I could no longer bear to watch as she was forced under the water and didn't come back up, I ranted at them in my heart and went home.

I read the news, which was full of rhetoric about modern precision weapons that would kill only those beyond redemption and harm no one else. I went to work and read grim statistics about human trafficking, and the violent destruction of people and creation. I’m a realist with a splash of cynicism, but I’m paradoxically afflicted with a love for humans, ducks, spiders, rats, snakes, and other maligned species. I have a chronic case of hope and an innate sense of joy. Trying to reconcile my experiences of the world with the conflicting elements essential to my nature led to many sleepless nights.

To cope, I told myself stories of alternate realities. I conjured up settings and cultures with ideas so different that people couldn't fall into their habitual sides and postures to react to them. I sketched a few story lines to my husband, who responded "You should write some of this down." But I didn’t; not at first anyway. I'm in a very time-intensive profession and we had adolescent and teen children then. I wanted to just live, and laugh, and forget. And my stories kept me soothed and enabled to do all that. But only in the daytime.

I was an insomniac, and even when I could sleep, I was exhausted by bizarre dreams. The occasional episodes of sleep paralysis that I’d had since early childhood turned into frequent episodes. But the last push to writing was in discovering that my younger son had inherited my tendency toward insomnia and sleep anomalies. So, I wrote stories for him to fall asleep to, just as I told stories to all of my children when they were younger.

I wrote episodes of what became the Sanctuary series on my laptop and asked him to edit them for me. I meant it only to be soporific; I fully assumed that he would find them tedious enough to fall right to sleep. To drive the point home, the first title given to them was A Cure for Insomnia. Without any pre-planned ideas of where the narrative would go, I let some “what ifs” weave their way into the story lines. What if there was a place where violence and preventable death were considered the ultimate evils? How could it have evolved? How would the inhabitants deal with factors which often lead to violence: fear, greed, or jealousy? Would it even be possible to achieve in the first place? Even if it were, how would the culture maintain itself despite internal and external pressures? Since such a place didn’t seem to exist in the world (though some societies come closer than others), aspects of its setting, peoples, and cultures would have to be drastically different from all others.

I had little except the “what ifs” when I started. I knew I wanted to avoid the approach toward peaceful societies that other speculative authors took: I didn't want to portray them as passive conformists who needed rescuing by highly armed outsiders (or learned from them that a just war was the only way to survive). But other than what I wanted to avoid, I had no set ideas in mind. In fact, I didn't even know that such a society was possible. Violence has been part of the human experience for so long, it would need a tremendous amount of effort not to resort to it and still have protection, justice, and even to re-direct what might be natural urges. There would have to be strong incentives to avoid it on the personal, familial, and social levels. That’s what I wanted the world of Sanctuary to explore. If I couldn't portray such a society in a believable way in fiction, there would be little sense in striving for it in real life.

The only other restriction I gave myself was that plot lines must develop organically. Characters would be fully developed and not stereotypical, and their thoughts and actions would be understandable in their context even if one happened to disagree with them. I hoped that if readers who had polar opposite opinions discussed issues brought up in the book, they would look at each other and say, “Wow, that’s weird!” in perfect agreement when considering Sanctuary’s unique approach to them. Perhaps from there, they could discuss what's at the heart of a particular issue and bypass the usual rote slogans and reflex responses of their entrenched sides.

If you’ve been a parent of a teen, you might relate to the occasional sense of disconnection that occurs as a child transitions into an adult. There’s a necessary distancing of past relationship patterns, and for the parent, this sometimes feels like a loss. So, while I would not have much response to my questions about my son’s day or his classes, the Insomnia/Sanctuary writing formed a new bridge of communication between us. He would ask questions about the setting, request more “screen time” for favorite characters, and talk about implications of a particular cultural characteristic. I learned to wait for his overtures and respond as they came; I would get a shrug or silence if I asked myself. For weeks at a time, there might be no interaction other than a gentle tapping to wake me up if I’d forgotten to leave the laptop out where he could find it. But there were many other times where ideas prompted by the narrative led to wonderful discussions.
So admittedly, good things came from forcing the stories out of my head and into words that could be read. Since writing took up my pre-dawn hours, I tended to fall asleep immediately when I went to bed. And if I did have thoughts keeping me awake, I wove them into the stories.

It’s been ten years now since I finished the original version of the series. I’m still a realist, but I’m also still hopeful. As long as there are people who are interested in examining the multiple facets of ideas and are willing to challenge their own presumptions after considering them in a completely different way, it’s bearable. I need to keep challenging myself to make sure that I do so.

I want to put my energy now in reading what other people have written, particularly if they have unique ways of retelling humanity’s age-old tales. I want to believe that we all have parts to play in creating a world grounded in the better part of our nature. Otherwise, we could become like the duck's mate, who gave in to his hopelessness and became what he was fighting against.

When Does a Booklover’s Collecting Become Hoarding?

Some friends of mine told me a sad tale about books a few years ago. The friends worked for an organization that was named the sole beneficiary of the estate of a retired academic with no remaining family. The organization had cared for the man’s sister in her declining years, and he was so touched by their kindness to her that he left all his worldly possessions to them.

He was not a wealthy man, but had owned his own home in a neighboring state. He’d loved books so much that his entire house was filled with custom-built shelves to accommodate his extensive collection. In fact, in his later years, he no longer slept in a bed. That had been removed to make room for more shelves, and he slept in a recliner.

My friends are lifelong lovers of books, and so am I. And while none of us would likely go to such extremes, the man’s extensive collection both amazed and saddened us. There were thousands upon thousands of books there, which the man had extensively catalogued at first. But gradually failing health must have made caring for his library difficult. He was a strong introvert, and we all hoped that he passed his final years surrounded by what he loved. And yet, as box after box was packed, it became apparent that he’d been unable to care for them over time. Many books had fallen behind shelving and were twisted and bent. Many others were moldy or insect-damaged, and nearly all were covered in dust. Heroic efforts were made at first to find good homes for all that were still in decent shape. Staff members and their family members were invited to have their pick and they took out bundles, but it barely made a dent. There were so many that eventually they were sold to an estate auctioneer and hauled away by truck to who-knows-where.

I have lived much of my life trying to come to terms with the responsibility that comes with the unearned privileges I have. I try to be guided by the words of Saint Basil the Great:

"The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit."

I give myself a little leeway on some of that, but in general I try not to acquire too much or to waste things and to give up what I don't really need. If I buy new clothing for myself, I always check to see if there’s something that I haven’t worn recently, but is still in good shape. If so, it should be given away at the same time.

But books.. surely books were to be considered differently. Books were the first thing I bought when I started my first after-school job. Books fed my curiosity, consoled me during hard times, and gave me new ideas. Books provided topics of conversation at social events where I was uncomfortable. Gazing at titles on bookshelves gave me a sense of people I was visiting and for visitors to get a sense of me. Books are conversations over place and time, they are ideas embodied, they are teachers of empathy, they are cautionary tales and guideposts; they are warnings and wisdom and laughter and everything in between. Their history, their covers and bindings, and their typesetting are works of art and moments in time. They are more than just things.

I never held back giving up a book to someone who wanted to read it, but made sure that there was an Ex Libris plate with my name on it to remind the borrower to send it home when finished. The only value that I strongly imposed upon my children (other than to be fair and kind to others) was to value books and reading. And so, it was difficult over the years to compromise with my spouse (also a reader, but not a book-collector) about how much room in the house books should take up. My philosophy was to keep adding shelves as we acquired books; his was to give books away as we ran out of shelf space.

I have learned over time to give books away, but I still find it difficult if I don’t have some assurance that they're going to a place where there's a strong likelihood that they'll be read. And with the rise of digitization, I felt it was all the more critical that bound books weren’t going to be hauled away and dumped or neglected somewhere.

But over the past few years, I’ve been learning to let go a little. It was the story of the elderly scholar’s lifetime collection and its sad end that was my first push. I started applying the same rule for books as I have for clothing and other possessions: if someone gives me a book, or I buy one for myself, I must give away one or more that I had previously. I haven’t managed yet to do as Marie Kondo suggests in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: empty all the bookshelves into one pile in the middle of the room, and then hold each book and make an active decision about it before putting it back. But the thought that I might not have space to do that in any room of my house, or enough time to do it in a single day, makes me think that if I don’t change my approach, all the books in my house might someday have to be hauled away en masse. And the real tragedy would be that most would have been unread for years.

So now, I’m embarking on a new approach to my life as a lover of books. Before I acquire a bound book, I’ll check first for an ebook version, and then for a copy at my local library. I’ll regularly go through my shelves and ask not: “which am I likely to want to read again at some point?” but rather, “which books deserve to be read sooner, rather than later?” For those books, I’ll try to find a place where potential readers could find them. For those that are particularly special, I’ll likely try something like http://bookmooch.com/, which is a worldwide online book-swapping site. For others, I'll go through the local nonprofit book collector or the woman who teaches at the local women’s prison and collects books every month to improve their under-stocked library. Most of them, I confess, I’m likely to keep, at least for a while.

If I could make better use of my time, I'd list all the books on my shelves that haven't been held, hugged, and read for a while. As I noted recently when book collections came up in one of the groups I belong to, I do see books in a rather animistic way, at least when I'm feeling whimsical. In my imagination, their words long to be read by someone. I want to make sure that they’re in a place where they can meet new people, and be held and thumbed through while reader and book shake hands and consider compatibility. If I’m no longer holding and listening to them, if they’ve become part of the background scenery of the house, wouldn’t I be a better booklover to let them go?

"What Have You Learned, Dorothy?"

Back when Facebook was still relatively new and just opening up to the general population, my kids patiently explained that I was doing it wrong. I understood it to be a way to share information and to bring up ideas that I might want to talk about, so I’d post articles from a variety of sources that were intriguing to me. I’m a half-closeted introvert and have never been able to get a real handle on small talk. But give me an idea and I’ll follow it wherever it leads. In fact, sometimes I notice a trace of a trail in the metaphorical thicket and invite the idea and its creator to follow me.

I limited my FB friends to those I knew, or had been introduced to by someone I knew, or had known in the past. I also limited the number of them because how could I keep up with everything a friend posted otherwise? (“But Mom, you don’t have to read everything … it’s not like a …. Oh never mind!”). It was a way to reconnect with friends that I used to have long conversations with, and to stay in touch with college-bound offspring without hovering.

I still use FB a few times a week, despite all its flaws and issues. For now, it’s a good source of aggregated news, both personal and universal. I have friends and family in a variety of vocations, geographic locations, and across a wide spectrum of politics, culture, and philosophical and religious perspectives. The articles posted, the moments shared, and the slices of life regaled keep me happily reading. Some of the ideas might be new or unusual, but those I know who post them give them a familiar context for me.

Goodreads was different. Joining it around this time last year was a very nerve-wracking thing for me. I didn’t really know anyone here. I didn’t know the structure or the culture or even the controversies that had swirled around not long before and still had fresh wounds healing. I saw a reference to it and thought it was something that I should do to stretch myself a little. It was to quiet the lecturing voice in my head and follow an idea that had been seething along in my mind ever since I’d discovered ebooks. Those had led me to an almost limitless virtual global library with books seeming to come into creation even as I browsed along the shelves.

I knew friends who’d joined GR, judging from Facebook posts, but I didn’t want to go in that way. I wrote as a hobby and a compulsion a few years ago, but few people who know me knew that and I wanted to keep it that way. So I decided to join as a separate entity to my day-to-day world self and try to meet other readers who wrote as a hobby. I imagined a shared storytelling around the fireplace kind of place and pitched it to RFG, whom I’d met when I’d looked in vain for something like that on lulu.com. Being a sympathetic and an encouraging kind of guy, he agreed to join GR and to form a little writing readers/reading writers group with me if we couldn’t find one here.

I realized that I had to do that if I really wanted to explore the notion that the new forms of reading and writing were circling us back to the ancient and more egalitarian ways of storytelling. I had to be on both sides: that of the reader, where I felt I most belonged and felt most comfortable with, and that of the writer, who faced a lot of uncertainty and risk in putting themselves out there. So I went public, sort of. I made a public profile with books listed, but didn’t really tell anyone.

I admit that I have advantages and security that professional writers don’t. As an amateur and hobbyist, I don’t have to worry about staying competitive or earning enough to feed my family. I do have to keep it sidelined to let my real job have precedence, but I’m happy enough to do that. But I assumed the role as a GR author as well as a reader because it wouldn’t seem egalitarian and sharing of the risk of ridicule and rejection in one’s stories if I didn’t.

Looking back over my year at GR, I’ve learned a few things. One is that there’s an interest group for nearly everything already, though it may not be active at any given moment. Groups are great places to meet people with similar reading tastes and to expand one’s palate (to belabor the metaphor). But I also learned that joining too many can have a downside and what starts out as low pressure reading can suddenly be angst-generating as deadlines loom. Another thing I’ve learned is that GR lists are really terrific ways to discover books. They can make one’s To-Be-Read shelves fill up faster than one can ever hope to read them.

Sharing book discoveries and impressions with others has been particularly fun. As I suspected, the best writers I’ve met are those who read a great deal. They’re generally the most personable and supportive. I’ve made many friends after reading books, sharing my excitement about them with the authors, and then having wonderful conversations afterward about all manner of topics regarding life and literacy. I used to hesitate reading and/or reviewing a book by an author that I’ve come to be friends with because I didn’t want anyone to think I was only doing so as a friend. But now, I don’t worry about things like that. Writers are allowed to have friends. They’re allowed to read books and have opinions about them. They can disclose if they want to, or not if they don’t. The best reviews are those that give a good idea about the book itself without giving away spoilers. If they’re done well, it doesn’t matter who the reviewer was, whether it was the author’s mother, cat, best friend, or chief detractor.

It could well be that there are hucksters out there, and hawkers, and those who annoy us in other ways. It’s a sea of humanity and we’re all different with different ideas. And though I hate to generalize people, I have indeed learned that those who list very few books read but somehow have hundreds and even thousands of friends, are generally interested in “friending” merely to promote their own books. They’re not likely to be interested in discussing the works of others at that point in their lives. When I see them in discussion groups or approached with a GR friend request out of the blue, I’m sometimes tempted to say: “This is Goodreads, honey, not Goodsales. You’re not listing any books that you’re reading now. That’s like teaching a nutrition class after you’ve given up eating. Writers, whether new, established, indie or trad, should not take themselves out of the readers pool. That only reduces the number of readers in the world. I don’t think anyone wants that.” But then I remember how risky and weird it feels to be on the writer side, and just wish them well.

Reading reviews regularly is something that I’ve picked up since joining GR. I generally avoided it in the past and still prefer a little distance between reviews and my own experience of a book. I want to form my own opinions first, and then go to those of others to see things that I might have missed. So even if I decide to read a book after reading a review, I make sure it’s well down in my reading list so that I’ll forget what was said about it when I start it.

Writing reviews, on the other hand, is not so fun, at least not to me. I admire those who write them regularly, and do so with a good deal of thought and care. I’ve come to realize that if writers need to acknowledge and nurture their own reading, then readers could well claim and nurture their own role as writers, whether of reviews or comments in discussion groups. They’re putting together words in an original way to get across ideas and opinions; that surely meets the definition of writing. They should have due credit for what they express, as well as the responsibility for doing it as well as they expect those writing in other forms to.

Another thing I’ve come to understand since joining GR is why there’s such an aversion to longer works. I tend to prefer epics and comprehensive reads, and was rather amazed at the prevalence of dedicated readers who prefer shorter ones. I wondered why that was so, especially for indies, who theoretically don’t have to adhere to cookie-cutter market standards. I particularly feel annoyed when buying ebooks. Unlike print-bound versions, there are no worries about them being too heavy or creating complexities and higher cost for printing. So why was there a preference for short works for serious readers? Was everyone afraid of the world ending and not being able to finish a book started? Was there fear that they wouldn’t like it, but would feel compelled to finish? Were they too compulsive to indulge in the time-honored practice of skipping parts that didn’t interest them?

But after participating in reading challenges based on books read, and seeing that most GR groups have books that are read together for a limited amount of time, I began to understand. So, I’m going to look for a reading challenge in 2015 that’s different. It won’t be based on the quantity of books, or even the overall word count read for the year, though that might be interesting. Instead, it would be based on the number of “Minutes/Hours Spent Reading in 2015” or even a challenge listing “Ideas, Themes, and Characters Discovered in 2015” or “Settings and Worlds Explored via Reading in 2015”. And if I don’t find anything like it, maybe I’ll come up with something myself. Because the most important thing I’ve discovered in my year with Goodreads is that to try to quantify all the wonderful new genres, rediscovered works from old genres, settings and themes that crossed genres, as well as all the ideas, perspectives, and styles that I’ve come across doesn’t do them all justice.

I joined for the challenge of exploring an idea and living an experience, and have met so many people who were very pivotal for me. If reading and writing are ultimately ways of interacting with other people across space and time, then all of the words shared back and forth in books, discussion groups, private messages, and reviews have enmeshed us together in a wonderful communion. I came to this vast virtual library as a stranger and was welcomed, challenged, and encouraged. I had delightful experiences with nomads, avatars, faeries, robots, rodents, and marsupials in my reading. I even unwittingly won a very fun prize for my writing that will be treasured on my virtual mantle for years to come. I continue to meet encouraging and supportive friends as I wander among the shelves. Even if we do no more than smile and nod as we browse or glance up from a book, it makes a good experience an even better one.

What do You Do (When it Quits Being New)?

Not long ago, I saw a short, but thoughtful placeholder blurb by a remarkable reader that I follow. Fiona’s reviews are usually comprehensive as well as insightful, and so the brevity intrigued me. She included a link to Tobias Buckell's website that explored the idea of whether one becomes jaded and cynical about reading or writing if one spent too much time at it. In the spirit of fairness to the book just read, Fiona decided to think a while before writing the review, to give herself time to consider whether her opinions about it were warranted because of the book itself or because of some of the factors mentioned in the blog.

Now, I don’t know if you read blogs in the same manner as I do. I tend to right-click each referenced link to open in a new tab so that I can read them after I finish the entire post. But I know many who jump immediately to each link as they come to it and read the reference before coming back, though sometimes the link takes them to other links and they may or may not ever return to the original post at all. (Even so, they have a very interesting reading session inspired by the blog). And some simply ignore all links in a posting and count upon the blogger to give them the main ideas and save them the trouble of clicking away on their own. I’ll try to make this work for those of all inclinations, but for those in hurry and tempted to stop right here, you could listen to Francine Reed and Lyle Lovett lament “What do you do, when it quits being new?” That’s pretty much the dilemma under consideration.

Buckell’s posting that Fiona was mulling offers these interesting points:

“…Book bloggers are doing it for the love, they’re not making mad money. They’re enthusiastic spreaders of the word…So what happens when a lot of that joy fades? Do they continue on momentum? Look to monetize the blog? Focus only on the books that they love, and risk losing the audience and community they created (because they’re interested in artist’s artists, or decrying the lack of originality, while readers who enjoy the books being decried decamp)? Get bitter and throw some bombs, which will certainly create debate and energy, but can also create pushback and enough argumentation that they get tired of the fighting about stuff (unless they’re trollish in nature, in which case they feed off the acid and you’ll always have that)?”

I suppose too much of anything could make a person jaded and hyper-critical. In those circumstances, it’s probably not a bad thing that we live in an age of JezzBall attention spans. Whenever my attention seems to waver in something that I’m doing for the love of it – whether it’s reading, writing, or researching something I’m interested in – I just stop doing it for a while and try something else. That’s obviously not an option for obligatory tasks for work, but it’s certainly fine for hobbies and recreation/re-creation. It might seem undisciplined to some, and admittedly, I had trouble doing it at first. I’m the kind of person who likes to finish whatever I start. But the freedom to put things down before I get really sick of it makes it more likely that I’ll pick it up in a more charitable mood later.

And sometimes, even at work, putting things down briefly is the very best thing to do for insight and productivity. In my very biased view as someone who hates to sit for long stretches of time, anything to be done that requires one’s backside to be pressed firmly into a chair (or other device designed for immobility and passivity) will ultimately stifle creativity, analytical ability, and perhaps even one's love for humanity (whether on the other side of the world or the other side of the cubicle wall). I’m convinced that one’s energy and ideas stagnate along with blood flow in one’s posterior and can only be set flowing again by walking, running, pacing, or climbing stairs for a few minutes every few hours. Writer’s block? It could be that your thoughts have become numb by being trapped under the largest part of your body. Stop sitting on them and go outside and see what’s happening in your corner of the world. Listen to the birds and guess which species are there around you. Once the feeling comes back in your bum, maybe they will in your thoughts.

Or perhaps you could try to incorporate more mulling and fermenting into your life, as well as in your mind. Make yogurt regularly, or tempeh, or wine, or anything else that starts as one thing and becomes something else with time and strategic stillness in the right setting. Ideas and opinions are very amenable to fermenting, often with very felicitous results.

Whether I’m reading or writing, I find it helpful to take a book’s characters out and about with me. They listen in on conversations and I try to imagine the responses of each. It helps them come more alive, and back in the days when I used to write for fun, it helped keep me honest and fair where varying perspectives were concerned. I wanted the complexity of real people and not caricatures and stereotypes in my stories, particularly when dealing with controversial issues and polemics. To make sure I wasn’t subconsciously channeling my own biases, I listened with all my heart to those across disparate political and religious persuasions. I tried to let my characters emerge as people that real humans could identify with, even if they were very different from me. Whether they were atheists, liberal believers, fundamentalists, conservatives, progressives, extremists, or non-committed, I wanted them to be someone that their real-life counterparts might nod and say, “That’s not me, but it’s someone that I could relate to.” And once those characters were created, they stayed with me, and listened along to new conversations, giving me a better appreciation for understanding things from the point of view of others. That often meant revising to let them evolve as I met more and more people and had some really terrific conversations.

Reading and writing are things I’m intensively drawn to, but I do get restless doing them sometimes. I don’t write stories anymore because at the moment there’s no joy in it for me. It’s a lot of work, and revising and editing are far easier to do if left in one’s head. Coming up with an occasional blog post is enough for me for now, but only if I feel like there’s something that might be useful for someone.

Reading is still something that I enjoy doing, though I’m not particularly disciplined about it. There are times when I really enjoy discussing what I read – online and off – but I don’t always feel motivated to express an opinion right away. I’m rather inclined to allow time for mulling, fermenting, and wandering around, even where books are concerned. That makes writing reviews difficult, particularly if I’ve devoted all my sitting tolerance during non-working hours to the reading itself. (I may put that down for a while too and pick it back up when the weather turns raw again. I’d be a terrible professional reviewer or book blogger.)

Maybe its the inner physical restlessness that keeps me from becoming too jaded when reading too much. Or maybe I’m naturally inclined to prefer Buckell’s strategy:

“For myself, I do some things to help blunt the impact of reading so much. I read outside of my genre a lot, to prevent burn out. I also revisit books that I remember fondly. With my new lenses, I usually am able to recover what fired me up about those books, while also being able to see their flaws. For some, that destroys the magic of it all, but for me it reminds that I’m the one who changed, not the book. If the book that made me want to write doesn’t read so well now, the words haven’t changed… but I have. That lets me know that other books I feel the same way about right now need to be more objectively examined.”

I think writing, even as an amateur, has made me a more open-minded reader, just as gardening made me better appreciate the food I eat. But when that’s not enough - when I notice that I might be judging something or someone too harshly about something - I have another tactic to ward off feeling disgruntled and petty. I go out and try something that is so beyond my abilities and experience that I flail about ridiculously and clumsily. Some examples of things I've tried that have helped me keep alive a sense of being a hopeless idiot that's so vital to a person's happiness: Shotokan karate, a musical instrument that’s physically difficult to manage, or portrait art despite a dyslexia of facial features recognition. They have all done very well in keeping me grounded in humility with a wide tolerance for things that don't matter in the long run. I think this even helps keep the Suck Fairy out of some previously-beloved books that seem unsatisfying years later.

And if I still somehow manage to be afflicted with a contentment deficit disorder with acute hyper-criticality despite those things mentioned (i.e, putting something down for a while, getting up to allow energy and creativity back into ass-smashed thoughts and ideas, taking books and characters out into the world to let them listen in and respond, turning to writing if I’m stymied with reading and more reading if I’m stymied with writing, or trying something I'm astoundingly horrible at), I take a hint from Joseph Campbell and follow my bliss for a bit. That often means reading a string of very good mysteries with intriguing settings to pull me right in and follow the characters over books and time. Tony Hillerman did it for me with his Navajo country books, Iain Pears did it with Italy and art history, and now I’m spending a second weekend in a row happily immersed in the Shetland mystery series by Marsali Taylor.

But even so, some things that we expect to like turn out tiresome and unsatisfying. Reading and writing are forms of communication, and communication needs an interactive connection. And sometimes, there just isn’t one. Maybe the reader and writer are at mutually exclusive places at a particular time. Maybe they'll never connect despite best efforts and good intentions. If it’s ok to follow our joy, it’s equally ok to acknowledge our frustration and disappointment, particularly if we were as fair and thoughtful as Fiona ultimately was when she gave her review the benefit of introspection and self-challenge before writing its final form in her typically thorough style.

Buckell concludes:
“Over time, I’ve been able to move back into a place where I can focus on what works about a book, and focus less on what doesn’t. Author C.C. Finlay has a quote he uses that runs something like: ‘A novel doesn’t excite readers because you took all the bad stuff out of it, it excites them because of all the good stuff that’s in it, regardless of the bad.’”

In the end, it’s the story that counts and not how famous a writer is, or how prolific, or how many sales he has. If the reader and writer connect in the story, that’s where the joy is. It could be in a book, in a movie or on stage, in a spontaneous tale in a supermarket check-out line, or anywhere else there’s a form of Once Upon a Time happening. And if there’s no fun in that, it’s time to get up, and do something new.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Ever-Expanding To-Read List

Ah, I understand! I finally get why so many Goodreads members have mind-bogglingly large To-Read lists. It’s taken about six months for it to finally sink in for me, but it has now.

I’m not usually such a slow learner. But it was hard to wrap my head around it at first. (Pardon me a moment while I banish the mental image of a head being flattened and wrapped.) How could anyone have 70 or 300 or 1700 books queued up for reading? Did they have any intentions of actually reading all of them? Or were they just trying to impress people?

I suppose I was visualizing the To Read list as a stack of books on the bedside table. I understand how half a dozen books or so could pile up. But many more than that and you would naturally stop browsing and selecting new ones until caught up, right? You’d demure politely and say that you couldn’t possibly if a friend thrust another, “You have to read this!” at you.

But come to think of it, it took me decades to be able to tell myself, “No, I don’t have to read that right now if there are others that I’d rather read first”. I’d spent a lifetime reading the recommendations of others and was generally glad that I did. I learned a lot and it was nice to share the experience of a good book with someone. But I have come across books on my own that I preferred to spend some time on and I feel far freer to read them whenever I wish, instead of making them wait until after I read the newly thrust-upon book(s). In the physical world of close-proximity people and bound books, I now say “Ok, but hold onto your book for now. I have six on my nightstand at the moment and I’m afraid I’d misplace yours if I take it before I’m ready”. Appealing to their concern for the book’s welfare works for all but the most persistent book advocate.

This doesn’t work in the online world with virtual book recommendations. There was no worry of a borrower spilling anything on a book or losing it under the bed or behind the sofa cushions. As my queue began growing faster than my rate of reading could keep up with, I began to panic. I’m a compulsive list-maker with a strong need to see progress as I check off items accomplished. I began to back out of groups with reading challenges and monthly reads – no matter how much they interested me – because it came to be almost a chore, an obligation, rather than something I wanted to do in my leisure to unwind and feel free.

One of the things I’ve loved to do since first joining Goodreads is to browse through reading lists of new friends and discovering writers and books that I wouldn’t likely come across at a nearby bookstore or library. Most of the books I’ve read have come from doing that. I see a listing of books that someone has and click on the links to read the descriptions. That’s often led me to click on those who liked a book to look at their book lists and then on to those who liked them and their lists too. I have no precise idea how I found some of the books in my reading queue. The one I’m reading now, Checkered Scissors, is an example of a book that I’m loving, but have no idea how I first discovered it. It might have come from a leap-about GR browse session just described or a Smashwords tag-leaping browse. In any case, I’m having a delightful time reading it.

The only problem with leap-about browsing is the danger of forgetting something newly discovered without some way of keeping track of what/where it is when you're ready for it. That’s when the revelation of the ever-growing To Read hit me. A GR friend asked recently why I kept my reading queue under an arbitrary number: first ten, then thirty, then fifty, and now one hundred. My answer was that I wanted to make sure that I could read them all.

But a passing comment that a GR author made to me recently in a message about bookshelves in his house gave me another way of thinking about this. There are bookcases in nearly every room of my house, populated with the combined collections of all family members. I haven’t read every book yet, and don’t expect to until I reach the point near the end of my life when reading is no longer possible. But I feel comforted rather than pressured by all those books. I like knowing that I could browse them and pull one out whenever I feel inclined, and I like that they have a safe home here with us and haven’t been tossed out somewhere with no one to care about them.

I decided to see my To Read list like the bookcases in my house and not as a task list that needs accomplishing. It’s my dynamic map tracking places to find books on virtual shelves that will be there when I’m ready for them. It’s ok that it grows faster than I can read because it’s a shelf of possibilities and safekeeping. And in keeping the books in my list, it keeps them sheltered in a shared virtual house for others to browse, to discover, and to keep. (Thanks, Edward M. Wolfe, for sharing your book Kendra with me, as well as your offhand comment from your daughter about books on your shelf that inspired this posting.)

Reading and Eating: Cravings, Quirks, and Culture

I know at least two unrelated people who refuse to start a book if they can’t read the last page first. It doesn’t matter if it’s nonfiction, a thriller, or a mystery that might be spoiled by knowing the ending. The first person presented the practice as logical: if the writing quality doesn’t last until the end of the book, there’s no point in getting invested in it and being frustrated. The other person acknowledged it was more of a compulsion and had no logical reason. Even if he tried to start at the beginning to read straight through, he felt antsy and uncommitted until he checked the end.

I realized that I had unconscious reading quirks myself the first time a GR member sent me a message asking about my books. Did I realize that the preview of the first book at lulu.com seemed to start in the middle? At the time, I had some issues with Lulu’s preview options in terms of accepting formats, but being a hobbyist at writing, I thought of book selection from my perspective as a reader. And I assumed fellow readers approached previews as I did.

Whenever I pick up a book in the library or bookstore, I open it at random and read several paragraphs at each section. I'm always frustrated with digital book previews that offer only a brief selection at the beginning. Most of that is taken up by the title page and chapter headings, and writers in general tend to take special care in the opening pages. Before I invest time, money, or imagination in a book, I want to be sure that the writing style is something that I can stay connected to all the way through. But after that exchange with the very nice person - who went on to buy the book anyway - and consulting with others about previews, I realized that I was just as quirky as my “read the last page first” friends.

It occurs to me when reading discussion topics on how each of us chooses which books to read that there is likely an undercurrent of idiosyncrasy running below the very logical methods expressed. There are those who read blurbs and reviews, and those that refuse to read reviews until later. There are those who don’t consider anything but 4-5 star ratings, and others who read only 3 star ones (assuming the 4-5 were somehow exaggerated or gamed). I’ve even run across those who are currently reading books that got rated 2 and below (to see if books were unfairly penalized for some reason, or simply ahead of its time) and still others who only read those who don’t have ratings yet at all. I must confess that I often do that last one myself. I do like being on the frontier of undiscovered books occasionally.

When at a birthday party for a work colleague recently, I was struck by the the similarities in approach to reading choices and eating choices. Now, I’ll admit upfront that I’ve spent most of my life as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but otherwise consider different foods as a wonderful reflection of human culture and interaction. I still follow my mother’s age-old admonition to try something first before deciding that I won’t like it. At the party, it seemed to me that everyone was trying to be healthy, many were trying to lose weight, and most had a decided sweet tooth. There was a lively discussion of foods, which led to a friendly debate on what was healthy and appropriate to eat, which reminded me quite a bit of GR discussion posts about approaches to book choices. There were reasons based on what could reasonably be considered objective criteria, but there was a great deal of what could rightly be considered quirks, whimsy, cultural conditioning, and associations with happy memories.

Most of those attending were readers and we often talked about books when we had lunch together. I was tempted to explore whether those with definite opinions about what they absolutely would not even try a bite of had the same approach to books. I decided not to, though; I didn’t want to distract attention at the time from the honoree and the happy frivolity of a limited work break. But I’ve been trying to notice ever since whether there are parallels. I’m guessing that our approach to food was determined quite a lot by our upbringing and local setting, though our own personalities and genetic makeup play a large part. In my case, my parents aren’t vegetarian, but they’ve always had a garden and when I was young, my father raised poultry. My mother was a nurse who believed a healthy diet was one that was balanced with a range of options in moderate amounts. There were no forbidden foods, but there was the requirement that foods providing nutrition should come before those that were simply fun.

There were always books in the house, from classics, to popular series, to encyclopedias, atlases, and other references. I was never told what to read explicitly, but somehow my sibs and I ended up with a healthy inclination toward a wide range of material in what I hope are moderate amounts. I do like to read things that are dense in ideas or beauty, but I also choose occasionally what I used to call “junk-food reading”. The latter would be formula books where one can pretty much know in advance the arc of the story, the style and feel, and that everything will turn out fine in the end. I don’t read those on a daily basis, any more than I could eat something sweet three meals a day, but I do crave them sometimes.

I wonder if those who are only happy reading certain genres or styles have similar propensities about foods? Are those who prefer reading popular fiction with thousands of good reviews more likely to prefer packaged or prepared foods? Are those who like reading nonfiction books more likely to be interested in the biochemistry of cooking, and learning to do as much as they can from scratch? Are those who prefer the undiscovered and the indi-est of indies more likely to seek out the most esoteric cuisines? And are the strictest judges of what other people write also those most critical about food quality and preparation?

Does adherence to the childhood instruction to finish everything on our plates make us feel more compelled to finish whatever book we start, even if we aren’t enjoying it? Alternately, are those of us who feel comfortable in putting even a few bites away for later if we’re feeling full more likely to put down a book for a bit or at least to skip parts? And to belabor the premise even further, are the increasing patterns away from formal meals, and more individual grabs of food on the run or at the desk when working, making us less inclined to read longer books?

I have no idea. But it seems to me that there are advantages and disadvantages to the brave new world of greater availability in variety of both food and reading. Arguably, economics and politics are present in both, as well as an unacceptable gap in the opportunity of access between those who control and profit and those who are marginalized. Even so, those somewhere in the middle who have more choices in what they consume – in either sense – still could be said to be coalescing into fairly rigid camps occasionally. Was there always such a debate among friends or colleagues of what was considered healthy food? Or are the very real health problems of the affluent, e.g. diabetes, hypertension, obesity, bulimia-anorexia, food allergies, as well as the competing goals of globally-marketed products versus local interests, causing us to limit ourselves and thus making the differences between us more acute? And is the wider availability of books because of electronic and independent publishing making us more or less likely to entrench ourselves into genres?

Follow, Fan, or Friend? Reading, Rating, and Reviewing in the GR World…

There was a show on PBS decades ago celebrating and encouraging reading. It was called Reading Rainbow and starred LeVar Burton, who’d previously played a young Kunta Kinte in the Roots mini-series, and went on to play Lt Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Since my kids are all grown, that’s about all the TV trivia I know.)

A TV show promoting reading might seem paradoxical to some. In fact, I knew parents who didn’t allow their children to watch television at all because it was considered an addictive junk food for the senses. How could something that would distract one from reading promote it at all? I knew others who didn’t put any restrictions on their kids in terms of viewing, or of anything else. Most of us tried to go for a balanced approach.

Despite the competing parental philosophies among our group of friends – or perhaps because of them - our children all seemed to grow up with a balance of respect for reading, popular culture, and tolerance of alternate ideas. I thought of Reading Rainbow recently, and the issues that we wrestled with when our kids were young, when considering my experience since joining Goodreads just under four months ago. One mother’s dismissal of the program had been that it didn’t offer anything that a good librarian couldn't. There is much truth in that, but what she didn’t see in those days before social media is that there is power in peer groups, even where individuality is celebrated. In the show, children talked about books they liked. LeVar Burton introduced the kids’ reviews portion of the episode by saying, “But you don’t have to take my word for it…”

I’ve always been rather introverted by nature. I’m at the point where I can pass as an extrovert at work or at home, but until I joined Goodreads, I generally did not interact much with people I didn’t know. I have a separate Facebook account that I’d gotten years ago because that was the only way to consistently interact with some far-flung friends and family members. But I only friended those I knew or had been introduced to by those I knew very well.

I heard about the benefits of Goodreads for both reader and writer, so I thought I might give it a try. I had belonged to various book clubs over the years, but came to dread having to go to the meetings. (I have no idea why; I’m just a homebody, I guess.) I liked the idea of being to share perspectives on books and still be able to have my non-working time at home to putter in the garden and not have to show up anywhere at a given place and time. And as a hobbyist writer, I wanted a place where I could find others like me who wanted to give our stories a place in someone’s imagination in exchange for offering a place for theirs in our own.

I found all those things in GR, and so much more. I didn’t really know anyone when I joined, but after joining groups, reading reviews and blogs, and making the odd, tentative posting to a discussion topic, I found myself with followers, friends, and fans. My goal of having at least one new person a year read part of a story I wrote was met fairly early on. With no more worries about that, I found myself reading a wider range of styles, settings, voices, and perspectives in three months than I’d have come across in three decades otherwise. I’ve read genres that I had no idea existed, such as paranormal romance. I’ve read genres that I didn’t think would interest me, such as paranormal romance – or romance of any kind – as well as books targeted towards middle school kids, books targeted toward aficionados of Steppes history, and books that fit in no defined genre to date. I’ve had message conversations with writers, which is happily mind-boggling in itself.

I must confess some puzzlement as to the GR etiquette of when to follow as opposed to friend or fan. I assumed that if I liked an author’s work, I’d be a fan. But that seems to mean blogs too, which makes sense, I suppose. That's a writer's work, but it's a bit weird to be a fan of a writer whose books I haven't read. So, I try to read books of those whose blogs I like to read.

If I like a reader’s reviews, I follow them, which also makes sense.

I feel a little awkward with the whole friend thing, and when that’s ok to do. I go back and forth between “oh, let’s follow or fan a while first, while we get to know each other better”, and the straight out, “Sure, life’s short. Let’s friend; what does that mean, by the way?”

But as I read various group discussions, particularly writers’ support forums, I became a little neurotic. Even while believing firmly that the world is a rainbow of ideas and opinions with validity, I became more and more worried about whether I was wrong in rating the way I did or reviewing the way I did, or especially writing the way I did. The readers groups I belonged to weren’t concerned about most of these things. Readers, who didn’t self-identify as writers as well, seemed to have no problems in being savvy consumers. They knew how to get the books they wanted and liked, and apparently read, rated, and reviewed to their hearts content.

Writers, on the other hand, seemed determined to scare the hell out of each other. They fretted that someone had to rescue poor innocent readers from buying books that they wouldn’t like. They fretted about the quality of some self-published writers reflecting poorly on all of them. They fretted that with all the competition of new writers publishing, readers would evaporate, forgetting that writers themselves were presumably readers too, and theoretically read more books than they wrote over a lifetime.

Some writers fretted about other people's cover art, or their proofing, or their rating & reviewing inclinations. Some bullied each other. Others were convinced they were being bullied by fellow authors. It was hard occasionally to figure out who was right, but I found it interesting that the readers, whose welfare the writers were vowing to protect, seemed happy enough to get along with each other and share ideas and favorite stories. (The only thing I ever saw close to the whole writing quality issue was a posting in a reading group that asked, almost apologetically, what was meant by a poorly written book and whether it was ok to like something declared to be that.)

I even read where reviews by another author didn't count, nor should a reader review an author they were GR friends with. I even saw where a writer should not thank a reader for a review, or have any contact at all. When I read that posting, I freaked out a little. I thought of the writers I’d met since being on Goodreads, and all the exchanges back and forth since I read their books, which ended up in a friendship. “Oh, my god,” I fretted to myself. “What if I’ve ruined their reputations with my reviews and ratings?!”

I saw a dizzying array of standards that books should meet before I could give them a four or a five star rating. If I had any integrity or concern for standards, I should be giving them all a three at best, or none at all. And for those who read a book of mine, God forbid that I should read one of theirs. That implies shady deals, rather than the mutual interest and inclinations that we might have naively assumed.

I suppose if I were conscientious person, I’d have fretted longer. Instead, I gave it a long bit of thinking to be fair to each of the various viewpoints. Then I left most of the writers groups. To be fair, they're for those who want to be professional writers, which I have no desire to be, and they're designed to encourage each other to reach a high standard for everyone's benefit. For that, I am grateful, and now that I'm not reading them, I can forgive a bit of condescension on their part if they can forgive the urge on my part to give them a few lessons in how to assess a book's quality before buying. Apparently, some don't seem to know and appear convinced that no one else does either. (Ok, maybe I haven't totally forgiven the condescension yet; I'm working on it though, I swear.)

I went back to just reading and enjoying all the lovely interactions with writers and readers from around the world. I truly believe in a reading rainbow of sorts, and we all have our place in it. Even so, it’s hard to the observer to say where one hue ends and another begins; the colors all blend at their borders. Was it Herman Melville who said, “We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”? So, I suppose it’s good that we listen to each other occasionally and fret from time to time. By being open to others, I’ve been exposed to new horizons, new genres, new perspectives, new challenges, and new friendships. But I’ve also learned that being too open to other people’s notions, especially those that make no sense in my experience, can cause more angst than I care to have at this point in my life. So, I think it’s ok to close oneself off occasionally. But you don’t have to take my word for it...

I’m Glad I’m Not a Professional Writer, and Other Thoughts of Gratitude

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice.”
― Meister Eckhart

I like reading. I like losing myself in stories and learning new things. I like original ideas and diverse perspectives. I love finding out how things work, where places are, and how what is came to be. I’m a reader, and a very dedicated one. I can’t pass a bookshelf without browsing titles. I’ve spent many happy hours in libraries, bookstores, and at yard sales rummaging through boxes of books. In recent years, I’ve shifted my browsing and reading to digital versions, but I still read just as much. I read fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, and academic papers. I read Wikipedia Talk Pages, cited references, warranty restrictions clauses and software EULAs.

When I’m not reading other people’s work or mentally adapting them to suit my fancy, I’m telling stories to myself. I find fiction helpful when trying to understand a present reality. Trying ideas on as another person, or a myriad cast of characters, helps me think things through. If there is a moral dilemma, a controversy, or some doubt about the ethics of an action, the mused settings in my mind and the imagined people that arise from them play out scenarios in parallel universes of possibilities.

I do a lot of writing in my head. I don’t do much with my fingers. The mind is faster and can take shortcuts. There are long-standing symbols that don’t need explanation. And there are enough people out there in the real world who can express thoughts better than I can.

I did write – with my fingers – for a few years. I was running out of psychic space for all the ideas and people in my head at a time when I couldn’t find what I wanted to read. It seemed to me then that books that I was picking up were too glib and fast about drawing lines and reaching conclusions. Instead of expanding my world, the books I found implied a narrowing down. Everything seemed to be a straight shot, black or white, yes or no, good or bad. Even flawed protagonists or antagonists with some redeeming qualities began to seem formula-derived after a while. Likely they weren’t really; it was probably the mood I was in. Or it could well have been the result of living in a country at war, both in the usual sense and a cultural one.

So, I wrote stories where simple categories weren’t easy and everything was connected to something else. There were consequences large and small, for good and for ill. But I never thought of myself as a writer. I would entertain the idea occasionally, but would ultimately lay it aside. Authors had to take risks I wasn’t willing to take. They had to do book tours, read their work aloud, do interviews and talk about what lay behind their words. They had to exude confidence to cover their natural angst of baring bits of their hearts and souls for the world. Even the thought of that makes me shiver. I was a hobbyist, an amateur. I wrote because I wanted to. I did it for the love of it. There were no deadlines, no pressures, and no performance anxieties. I was lucky enough to have a real job that I liked, so I didn’t have to write to earn a living. I don’t have the talent or the stamina, but somehow, I still ended up with the angst.

So why did I publish at all? Why do I have an author page? I don’t know. I guess if writing is a form of communication, it means that an interaction should take place somehow. There’s something there that needs to flow in more than one direction. An amateur writer still needs the occasional connection and I wondered if there was another me out there to connect with.

In most ways, I’m very glad that I did. It helps me empathize more with those who’ve given me so many interesting worlds and happy hours. It’s made me a more appreciative reader. I’ve met many writers since joining Goodreads a few months ago and despite a variety of backgrounds and personalities, they are all helpful, encouraging, intriguing, and generous. Although I still ultimately choose what to read by browsing through samples and descriptions of books, I must confess that I find those samples by reading discussions posts and blogs. If I see writers being helpful or sympathetic to others, I’ll go to their pages and read more about them. If they’re actively reading other books and discussing ideas in their blogs and not simply promoting their own work, I’ll sample their books. And if I like them, I buy them, whether they’re traditionally or independently published. I realize that this might be a little unfair: I may well have liked books by authors who are horrors as human beings, but my recently read and to-be-read lists are full of great books by great people.

I try not to get involved in fierce forum discussions about trad vs self-publishing, or raising the bar of quality, or who or when to review, or how ratings should go. There are many valid points. But I’m so happy with this new world of reading and write-sharing that I tense a little at the thought of some kind of review and rating system to shield me as a reader from being able to make my own decisions. I don’t want anyone to narrow my options for me. Reviews are nice, and so are ratings, but ultimately I depend on my inclination and how well a writer connects with me in the excerpt. I do care about grammar and plot construction and all of those things that a well-crafted work of art has. But I want to be able to decide for myself who fits it. (That being said, I was delighted to receive the SROP Silver Rodent Award as a writer and am determined to win a gold in newer revisions!)

You might be wondering what the point of this ramble is. So here it is: it’s gratitude. To all of you professional writers out there: thank you, thank you, thank you. You might feel sometimes that you ought to just give up, but please don’t. As long as you have a story that needs telling, tell it. Keep improving it, keep looking for where its voice is best heard, and let it speak. There are readers all over the world and if you made a difference in the heart of one of them, wouldn’t it be enough? (Ok, maybe you need to pay rent and buy groceries, so money would help too. But another job would do that with less risk, right?)

For all of you who help writers and readers find each other, thank you too. For those who put aside sheer enjoyment in a story to better notice grammatical flaws, for those with courage and compassion to tell a writer how the writing might be better even if it hurts a little right now, for formatters and book sellers, for blog writers and reviewers, for moderators and support staff, and for all who make sure readers get the widest possible choices of books, thank you. For publishers with vision and heart above all else, whether traditional or independent, thank you for taking the financial risks in a very uncertain time. For cover designers and illustrators, who must take multiple ideas and thousands of words and distill them into an image that both writer and reader could connect with, thank you.

And in particular, a very heartfelt thank you to Kat of Aeternum Designs. When I approached her for the possibility of a professional cover, I really didn’t know what I wanted or why. As I confessed to equally supportive GR friends in our Cyber Hearth group, I felt like a fraud. Wouldn’t a professional cover mislead a possible reader into thinking that I was a professional writer? But after encouragement from all and my own admonition to myself to move away from labeling, Kat worked very gently with me and my angst. Her questions helped me see the cover as a symbol in the mythic sense of what the story said, what its mood was, and what was most important in its message. She reworked numerous design drafts to change colors, tones, and feelings evoked, without charging me extra. Whenever she sensed that I was settling for a proposed design rather than absolutely loving it, she kept on, finding what the hesitation was and coming up with a new way to address it. I think she must have lost money on me with all the time spent, but she was wonderful and I would suggest her to anyone looking for a cover. (Thank you again, Kat, and I’m almost ready with the new revision on Lulu. I think Smashwords has it already.)

And finally, to all those angels among my fellow readers (whether you write as well or not), those of you who spend hard-earned money to give a voice to those who feel they must speak or burst, you are the heroes and heroines of this new age. We truly have a voice now and we are singing out, loud and clear. We do it through our recommendations, our encouragement, our buying, our sharing, our book clubs, our discussion topics, and our overall passion. The world of writing belongs to us. Whether we read as well as write, or read exclusively (and then read some more), this is our time. Our only real obligation, besides being open and fair and willing to stretch our minds for the imagined reality of another, is to re-give the gift of reading that was given to us. Whether we teach, tutor, donate, volunteer – or do other work in schools, libraries, literacy programs, or education funds – this ability to read, of having infinite open doors, is something every human should have as a birthright. And if we’ve been given it, we need to do what we can, even the smallest bit, to pass it on. And for writers, this goes doubly so.

Today is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday. Some call it Pancake Tuesday. The more spiritually inclined might refer to it as Shrove Tuesday. It’s meant as a last bit of exuberant carefree self-indulgence before the beginning of Lent, a time of reflection, contemplation, and challenge for many throughout the world. No matter what I might happen to feel about religion at this time of year, I try to observe Lent in some way. I let the jubilation of Fat Tuesday fold into the spare solemnity of Ash Wednesday. No one is born immune to suffering and the physical act of smearing ashes across one’s face, an act of mourning and regret thousands of years old (“Remember you came from dust and to dust you’ll return”), is a good reminder to pay attention to what’s important.

It’s a time to acknowledge what distracts us from what’s crucial and to put those aside for a while. For readers, writers, and every combination of the two, it can be a time to find out what life is at its essence and attend to it, like Christ in the desert or Buddha under the Bo tree. To think deeply, and to gently put aside what can wait, is a gift in itself. And so I will close with the poet T. S. Eliot for a summation of how I will try to respond to life right now, whether to publish more broadly, write more concisely, listen more compassionately, read more attentively, or simply to catch up on all those reviews that I want to write but haven’t managed to do yet. Today I’ll be carefree and indulgent and tomorrow, and for the weeks following, my mantra will be:

“Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”