Reading Wrap Up for 2015

I started this year with a number of reading-related goals, among them to read more published books (as opposed to manuscripts) than I have been managing recently, to read more diversely, and to try my hand at a number of reading challenges I’d found around the internet, one of which in particular focused on reading books you’ve had sitting on your bookshelves for a year or more instead of endlessly buying new ones. As it’s the last day of the year, it’s time to see how I’ve done.

In terms of reading more, I certainly managed that one. I’m one book shy of hitting my goal for the Goodreads Challenge, and I’m nearly finished with my current read, so I can safely say that’s one goal met. In terms of diversity, 63% of the books I read were by women, with the remaining 37% by men, and that’s about on par for me in terms of gender split, falling a little more heavily on the women-writers side than last year, but then I tend to read more women than men by default. As for writers of color, they accounted for 30% of this year’s reading, up slightly from last year’s 25%. It’s not a bad number, but I’d still like to raise it, so that’s a goal that will carry on into 2016.

As for the other challenges I took on, I failed pretty abysmally, indicating that perhaps given the small amount of time I have for personal reading, I should focus on fewer goals rather than spreading myself thin trying to find ways to read things that count for more than one challenge. So I’m sticking to my basic reading goals for the coming year: Read more books, read more diversely, and try not to buy quite so many new books when I have so many waiting for me at home already. I’d also like to read more books in translation, but I feel that dovetails nicely with my goal to diversify.

I’m happy to say I read some really wonderful books this year. I could probably go on for ages extolling the virtues of a few of the titles in particular, but instead I’m just going to list a few favorites, in no particular order. Please note that these books are all personal reads; none of the authors are clients.

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I’d love to hear what books have made an impression on you this year. New favorites? Recommendations? Or were there any books that were a true disappointment? Feel free to share your bookish thoughts in comments. I look forward to hearing what had you excited in 2015, and wish you all the best for a wonderful new year of reading and writing!

 

 

Best Laid Plans: Learning to Roll with the Punches

I’m supposed to be back in California today, but instead I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed in my room at my parents’ house in Connecticut. In a perfect example of a domino effect, my first flight out last night was delayed an hour and a half, which happened to be nearly the precise length of my layover before my second flight out to Los Angeles. When I went to the airline’s desk to get rebooked, I fell victim to a combination of holiday crowds and the economy, meaning there weren’t any available seats on any flights out of the New York/Connecticut area to LA until Friday morning. (Lots of people traveling, fewer total flights on the schedule.) Fortunately I didn’t have any major plans for the next few days, but I did have some things I intended to do, and now they’ve been… preempted.

It’s fair to say I was pissed off last night. But there’s nothing I can do about the situation, and it’s not like it’s a catastrophe. Sometimes, however, it’s difficult to keep an upbeat attitude when fate steps in and messes with your plans, and this is just as true when planning your career as it is when making travel arrangements.

Writing can be a frustrating business, no matter where you are in the process or how long you’ve been at it. Some days it might seem like all you’re asked to do is jump through hoops: Submitting to agents, submitting to editors, doing rounds of revisions, rewriting book proposals, mastering social media. It goes on and on, and in may cases what you do needs to be redone because it didn’t work the first time. Not all manuscripts get published, not all books sell well. Sometimes writers have to start over with a new editor or new publisher, or even a new pen name. It can get discouraging.

You need to get through it. If you want to be a published writer, you’re going to face rejection and frustration. It’s the nature of the business. There is no easy route or guarantee of success, whether you wish to publish traditionally or you give the self-publishing route a try. Either way, you will have to work hard, and there will be days you need to dust yourself off and try again. Occasionally, a bit of luck might rain down on you, and when it does, you should smile and be grateful, because most of the time, writing is a job. It’s an art, and it can be a joy, but it’s also a job, and every job, even the one you adore, has its difficult facets.

But here’s the thing. When you commit to writing, when you decide this is what you want, you become part of a larger world of people who love and appreciate storytelling and words and books. There are rewards along with the frustrations, and not all of them might be initially obvious. So remember you can do this. You just need to get your words down, one at a time, day after day. Write that first draft, then rewrite it again and again until the words sing and your characters pop off the page. Reach out to fellow writers for help and encouragement. Find people who understand your dream and let them give you emotional support. Allow yourself to suck because those lousy sentences and weak paragraphs give you something to revise, a place to start. And when disappointment or frustration strike, take a deep cleansing breath and ask yourself “what next?” because the only way to get to your destination is to keep moving forward. Word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter.

Now go write.

Finalizing Your Writing Goals for 2016

A couple of weeks back I suggested you start thinking about your writing goals, both your progress on those set for this year and what you might like to accomplish in the year ahead. Now that 2016 is only a few days away, it’s a great time to get out a notebook or open up a file on your computer and start really shaping and finalizing those goals for the new year.

Whether you’ve got mental notes or written ones regarding your wishes for your writing career, start jotting them down now. Make a list of every goal you have for your writing, from the small things to the truly out-there, oversized dreams. Don’t worry if they’re attainable in the next year. This exercise is just to get an idea of the scope of your ambitions, keeping in mind that some things will likely change in the years ahead.

Once you have a list, go through and note a reasonable time frame to complete each item. Is it something you can manage in a month? Will it take several months of concerted effort? Perhaps an entire year, plugging away a bit each day? Or is it something you’d like to tackle eventually but you know is a bit out of reach for the time being, whether because your skills haven’t quite reached the stage where you’re ready or because there are many things you need to accomplish to prepare for the goal?

Now it’s time to decide what goals you’d actually like to work on in 2016. You probably have a fair idea, if you’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of weeks. There are also going to be things that are prerequisites for others — such as finishing a book before you can submit it, or publishing something before you can achieve any sales goals. But you want to find a balance in your goals; some should be a true challenge that take a good part, if not all of the year, while others should be achievable in one-to-three-month blocks of time.

Once you’ve chosen one or two large goals and a handful of smaller ones, consider any factors that affect when you’ll be able to work on them and when you should work on them. Pencil in a potential time frame for each, such as all year, February/March, June — September, etc. Again, try to balance your schedule. Obviously year-long goals will be a constant, but try not to overlap too many small goals unless they tie together in some way that makes it necessary or you feel like you’ll have extra free time to work on them for some reason. And if a goal is large enough that it will carry into the following year, be sure to space out your efforts so that you make appropriate progress by the end of 2016.

Now that you have a rough idea of when you’ll be working on each goal, you want to come up with a couple of brief bullet points regarding the how. What do you need to do in order to achieve each goal? What steps must you take? What actions? Think about things that might distract you from your goals, and how you can avoid them. For example, if your goal is to write daily all year, but you know you get distracted by interruptions, think of ways to limit them, such as turning your phone off or activating the privacy setting, setting up an internet blocker during your writing time, or hanging a note on your door so your kids know not to interrupt unless there’s an emergency. If self-sabotage is an issue for you, come up with a little pep talk to give yourself when that devil on your shoulder is tempting you to play hooky. You want to determine both the route to your goal and how to dodge the common obstacles along the way.

Finally, break down any larger goals that have multiple steps so you have an idea of what sort of progress you’d like to make. Tackle one part of the goal each month or each quarter — whatever feels logical to you based on how intricate and challenging your project is to complete.

Use whatever system you like to organize your goals for the year. Some people simplify and just hang a list on their cork board or refrigerator, others keep detailed notes in a journal or a spread sheet. Goal deadlines and any projected completion dates should be put on your planner or calendar, including due dates for those smaller components that you’ve broken down from your larger goals, and you can set reminders in your phone if you’d like a periodic nudge to keep yourself on track. The important thing is to keep your goals accessible and to check in on them periodically in order to lessen the chance of veering off course. I recommend reviewing your progress at least at the end of each quarter of the year, at which point you can make small adjustments as necessary depending on how things are going.

Be sure to keep your original list of goals — the one that included your big, crazy dreams. It will give you a head start this time next year when you sit down to determine your goals for 2017. Good luck with setting your goals for the year ahead, and happy writing!

Writing through the Home Stretch: Day 27 of the Challenge

We’re heading into the home stretch of the December Writing Challenge. Just five days left. No matter whether you’ve written every day or just pushed yourself to write more frequently than you normally do in this busy month, I hope you’re feeling accomplished and like you have a solid writing foundation to carry you into the new year.

The goal, of course, is to keep writing in January. But that should just be the start of your ambitions. If you haven’t already been thinking about your writing goals for next year, take a look at this post and spend a bit of time doing so over the next couple of days. I’m going to be discussing goal-setting further over the course of the week, including ways to keep your ambitions fresh in your mind all year long instead of allowing them to fade into the background like so many forgotten new year’s resolutions. So get ready to commit to some new challenges.

Meanwhile, get that writing time in today. Sit down at your computer or pick up your notebook and get your words down. Remember, all the words count. Happy writing!

 

Getting Back to the Page: Some Writers on Writing

Trying to get back to writing after a day or two off can be a tricky thing. Perhaps you’re excited to write and get right to it, no problem, in which case, have at it and good for you. But you might be feeling a bit of holiday hangover — figurative or literal — that makes even the idea of thinking about your project unappealing. Or you want to write but your brain is still turned off. It happens.

For all of you struggling to get back to it, and to those of you who just would like a little writerly advice, I offer up this video of several writers talking to interviewer Charlie Rose about different aspects of writing. I hope you enjoy and that it sends you back to your desk. And just remember, all the words count. Happy writing!

Emergency Writing Prompts: Day 23 of the Challenge

Those of you participating in the December Writing Challenge are inching into sticky territory. Last minute shopping, cleaning the house, cooking for the holiday dinners. You name it, suddenly you can’t put it off any longer and writing might be looking like something that should take a back seat.

If you’ve saved your two days off for the month, it might be time to use one. But if you’re still trying to squeeze in a little writing and you’re feeling uninspired with the pressures of the holiday bearing down on you, here are a few quick prompts to get the ideas flowing. Don’t forget, you don’t need to write daily on a single project, so maybe a little time to play will get you over the hump.

  • Write about the absolute best holiday memory you have, from any holiday. A party, a gift, a trip, a visiting relative. Were you a kid or an adult? Were you awed or surprised by something? Make that memory as vivid as you can and get it down on paper.
  • What about your worst holiday memory? Did you ever experience a holiday where something bad superseded the holiday celebration for your family? An ill relative, an accident, some ongoing issue? Or perhaps the holiday itself turned out disastrous. Burned dinner, no-show friends, a blizzard keeping everyone trapped under one roof for too many days. Write about a tragic holiday experience, or take what was a holiday disaster and write it as a farcical experience with the benefit of hindsight.
  • How about a character forced to spend a holiday alone? Maybe they’re stuck somewhere without the money to visit family, or they’re in a situation that won’t allow them to travel: prison, quarantine, orbiting Mars. How might they celebrate? Or regret that they can’t? Or, a slightly different take: a character celebrating with a group of total strangers. How or why might that happen?
  • Write about a family holiday from the point of view of your pet. What might your dog or cat think of the human holiday traditions? Make it serious or funny, your call.

I hope these give you a little jump start, or at least set your imagination flowing. Have fun and remember that all the words count. Happy writing!

 

Molly Crabapple on Art, Writing, and Creative Work

Artist and journalist Molly Crabapple sat down with the folks at Vice recently to talk about her creative habit and her new memoir. She has some interesting, honest things to say about the grind of working in the creative arts day in, day out. The video includes some liberal swearing and a few sketches with nudity, so please use your own discretion regarding viewing it at work or if those sorts of things offend you. Otherwise, I encourage you to check it out for a little creative inspiration. Pardon the link, but it didn’t want to embed for me. Enjoy!

Taking Drawing Lessons from Artist and Journalist Molly Crabapple