Friday Reads 2.16.24

It’s Friday, and you know what that means. Let’s talk about all the things!

It’s the first Friday of Lent, and that means my annual social media sabbatical is underway! I’ve committed to staying here, because we have business to do and this isn’t social media in the scroll sense. But the rest—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—are under the control of my brilliant minions. Who, let's be honest, run things better than I do. (Who was that who accidentally hosted 4 contests at once in three places last week? Yeah.) I love stepping away from time to time. I miss everyone, but it’s really good for my brain. While it seems so innocuous to just pop into my Facebook group to say hi, that inevitably leads to checking the main page, then the feed, and I should check Instagram, too, and the next thing I know, I’ve lost an hour to our META overlords. These six weeks away are very restorative for me.

It’s good timing, too, because I’ve been experiencing some real disruption to my body, my mind, and my schedule recently. Part of this sense of dislocation I can attribute to the physical therapy and yoga therapy I’m doing to address the hEDS. We are rewriting my brain’s neural pathways, helping it reinterpret the pain signals and move in ways I thought I couldn’t. It’s only natural that I’m feeling off—I *am* off! Even my most basic sense of balance and posture are being challenged. This tells me it’s working, right?

But all this new movement comes with the logistics of getting there, which has been good for podcast listening but not great for the deep, slow work days I crave. And I traveled last week to see my parents and then to another state for a retreat, and this week has had at least one out-of-the-house errand or appointment each day that’s taken several hours. You know how it is when you start something new. Everything feels wrong until you find the rhythm.

Schedules are a delicate thing. When your habits are blown up it can be very difficult to concentrate, to focus. I’m working on how to react to the disruption because I need a new formula.

Speaking of the retreat… the Dread River Writers got together in Birmingham, and wow, was it a fabulous time! You know we authors love a good sit down with our peers, love to talk shop, creativity, our frustrations and dreams, and be encouraged by people who genuinely believe in us. This was all of that, and more. It was a wonderful weekend. I got almost 5000 words done on the new book, made some new friends, had a free orthopedic consult on my knee, saw a cool German pot still, laughed myself silly, and otherwise had a merry old time.

All this to say, I haven’t read much this week at all. There’s a good reason for no external books—I’ve been working on the page proofs of A VERY BAD THING. This book, y’all. I’ve read it at least fifty times now, and this go, I have to remove myself from it entirely and try to read critically, pretending I don’t know what happens next. It’s hard, probably the hardest read of the whole process. And I’m nearing completion of the next writing series step, The Outline, and will have that to you soon, I promise.

I have been reading INTO THE WILD by John Krakauer before I go to bed. It’s a research book for the new novel, and it’s a fascinating read. The movie adaptation was excellent, too.

And I am catching up on my podcasts, and was wowed by this gem from Cal Newport. It’s a fascinating look at why we’re not lazy; we are simply trying to do too much, and our brains rebel. And the inverse quality curve of doing one great work at a time (Y Axis = Excellence) versus doing a lot of less focused work at once (X Axis = Multiple Projects) really hit home. Over the past several months, I’ve pulled back on as much as I can to focus solely on this space and my novels, and it feels great.

This piece by Substack wonder hit home in so many ways. The idea that we have to be our own medical advocates is truer now more than ever, and having just gone through a couple of years of “It’s anxiety” myself, I am so grateful she continued pushing to find answers.

🎉 We hit 1000 subscribers here on Substack this week, too! Thank you, all! I got a few questions from other Substackers about how this number was met, and I told them to be authentic, and be consistent. I moved 300 of you over from my website blog feed, and the rest is organic growth. I am so grateful! 🥳

I do have goals for how I want The Creative Edge to look, naturally. But the quality of our exchanges is much more important to me than the numbers. I’m trying to create a space that’s fun, safe, and respectful to all of our book choices as well as share the knowledge I’ve accrued over the past nearly two decades in publishing. I’m super happy with how everything looks and feels, and I hope you are, too!

That’s it from me this week, overcompensating with words because I don’t have a lot of books to share. How about you? What’s on your reading plate this weekend? And do you ever take a sabbatical from your daily life?

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