Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon

Friday Links: Letting the World Influence Your Writing

Nephele Tempest

TGIF! I hope you’re all in the process of checking in with your goals for the year, as I discussed yesterday. The new quarter kicks off tomorrow, so you’ve got a nice low-key weekend in order to ramp up for whatever you plan to tackle next. As for me, I’m excited to be attending BinderCon LA this weekend, where I’ll be taking pitches and attending some of the panels. Give a wave if you see me there!

Meanwhile, I’ve got a great assortment of links for you this week, and I’m just going to dive right in with those. Quite a few of them focus on ways to open up and let the world and its influences into your writing process. I hope they provide some inspiration. Have a terrific weekend, and happy writing!

If Fiction Changes the World, It’s Going to Be YA – A look at how young adult fiction has been addressing politics, culture, and current events.

The Other Side of the Desk: What I Learned as a Writer Editing a Lit Mag – Some outside perspective on writing and submissions from someone straddling two worlds.

7 Tips for Donating Old Books without Being a Jerk – Some good advice for the next time you prune your shelves.

April 2017 Reader (and Volunteer) Sign-Ups! – Sign up now to participate in the next round of Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon on April 29th.

Jami Attenberg: ‘I wanted to see if there were other happy endings for single women’ – The author talks about her new book and her wish to create a different type of independent heroine.

Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest – Guidelines for entering the contest, which has a May 15, 2017 deadline.

Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories – For anyone in or soon to visit the LA area, this new exhibit on Butler and her legacy runs from April 8th to August 7th.

Instead of Writing, I Watched Trains – A writer shares how his form of procrastination actually helped him refill the well and get back to work.

Readathon Wrap-up

Nephele Tempest

Here’s a quick wrap-up for anyone curious as to the outcome of my readathon experience this weekend. I made it about 18 of the 24 hours, but because things geared up at 5am in my time zone, I was pretty much done by 11pm, without a lot of hope for waking early and reading more before the 5am deadline the following day. So I crashed and just got up briefly to cheer everyone on Twitter, then conked out for a few more hours.

Still, I read two entire books over the course of my readathon, one full comic book trade (about 6 regular-length issues), and made it about 50 pages into a third book, so I call it a win. Sunday, I did very little, and certainly no more reading, but it made for a great weekend, and as always I found the readathon experience to be tons of fun. There’s something about knowing so many other people around the world are settled in with their books and keeping track along with you. The social media aspect makes it even more enjoyable. A different experience for what is normally such a solitary activity.

Books read:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball (ARC)

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (in progress)

Secret Avengers v. 1: Reverie by Nick Spencer and Luke Ross

Readathon: Six Hours Down

Nephele Tempest

BuriedGiant

We’re just over a quarter of the way through the readathon, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through my book. I always have high hopes for these events, but the reality is I rarely manage more than three books over the course of a readathon, and that’s only if I read pretty steadily for the full 24 hours. Today I will probably grab something short to read in the middle, once I’ve finished the Ishiguro, so I have a bit more sense of accomplishment.

I do realize that reading speed is personal and enjoying your book is the important part of the readathon, but at the same time, I’d love to make more of a dent in my TBR stack, which is enormous. All I can do is keep plugging away, and put down any reading picks that aren’t suiting my mood to move on to something that might engage me more. And on that note, I’m headed back to my book.

Ready, Set, Read!

Nephele Tempest

Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon kicks off this morning. It’s an east-coast-centered event, which means for me here in SoCal, the reading starts at 5am. I’d considered delaying a bit and reading slightly later than the rest of the crew, but what’s the fun in that? So I set my alarm and now I’m wide awake and raring to go. This means: coffee is brewing, I’ve pulled out my Jane Austen mug for the occasion, I put an extra pillow on my couch, and the coffee table is weighed down with books. I’ll post here occasionally throughout the day, but will probably be updating on Twitter: @NepheleTempest, so if you’re curious about my progress or what I’m reading, that’s the place to check. Happy reading to anyone else participating!