Readers Anonymous

June 23, 2012

Readers Anonymous

"Famished readers are all alike; every satisfied reader is satisfied in her own way."

We have a winner for yesterday's mad lib: "It is a cliche grudgingly acknowledged that a crazed writer in possession of a strict deadline, must be in want of a shower."

It was the first line from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and the winner was a former student, Danielle. Yay, Danielle!

The real first line reads: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

So. If you’ve read all three of my previous Summer Challenge 2012 posts, you know the shame I'm going to own up to. I am limping along in one of my four Challenge Tasks.

Reading.

I know. Pathetic, right? But this is the one I’m, in truth, having the hardest time accomplishing. Yoga, drafting, blogging are all easier to accomplish, because they fit my ‘work’ or ‘chore’ categories, and lo, these many years I’ve been manipulating myself into finishing such activities.

Reading, however…

I’ve spent an equal number of years suppressing my desire to do nothing but read. From late elementary school to high school, I used to disappear into books for weeks on end, barely surfacing long enough to eat and sleep. During class, I would hide Anne McCaffrey or Marion Zimmer Bradley or Frank Herbert or Mercedes Lackey novels in my lap. You couldn't stop me from consuming novels. Because...

My name is Elizabeth, and I’m addicted to reading. It's my drug of choice. (Besides caffeine naturally.) I don’t know how to moderate my reading into short spurts of an hour here or there. When I want to read, I want to read ALL the books! It’s either an all-day bender or nothing at all.

So, I’ve made a little progress in Cinder, a chapter or two. (Clearly, my hopes of having it completed by now were optimistic at best.) But I’m not one to wallow in defeat for long. When I realize something isn’t working, my next move is to find realistic, actionable steps to take.

Here’s the plan:

I’m going to set a timer an hour a day in which I MUST read. That hour is sacrosanct for reading. When the timer goes off, I can stop if I need to move on to other tasks. I am allowed to read beyond the timer restrictions, but during that hour I can do NOTHING but read.
No Twitter.
No blogging.
No aimless internet hopping from author blog to author blog.
No email.
Phone gets turned off for that hour.

This is what I already do in order to get my writing done. So, instead of a writing sprint, I propose a reading sprint for an hour a day. Because, for real, my book queue is going to go all Montresor on me soon. (Yeah, that's right. Cask of the Amontillado style, bricked-up-alive-by-my-wall-of-books death.)

While visiting friends in Columbus the last few days made completing my Challenge Tasks more difficult, it did yield meaty conversation and this spectacular new haircut. Having returned home recharged, I should have more success this coming week.