When Do We Do Our Most Important Work? (Let's Refresh That Reading Habit!)
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It used to be that I didn't have to think about it.
I didn't schedule it, plan for it: that would have been silly. It was simply something I did, because I loved it.
As a kid, I had this incredible drive to read.
To read all the time.
I mastered the ability to pin a book under my chin so I could, say, make up the bed and keep reading. Or clean up my room and keep reading.
Okay. I know. It was pretty counterproductive. (Sorry, Mom!)
But I read all the time.
In high school and college, I read what I wanted to in and around the school requirements. Even when I was overwhelmed with homework, I still snagged Sunday nights for rereading stuff like The Chronicles of Narnia or A Year in Provence.
In the full-time writing life, I've had to experiment a bit more.
Next to the mega-challenge of learning to write a novel, remembering to read them seems like a less urgent task.
A reading habit fits for a while, and then falls apart, needing a redesign.
And that's where I'm at again: realizing that lately (okay, okay—for basically all of 2016 so far!), I've had no real plan for reading fiction.
Which means, I haven't been reading fiction.
I know that part of this relates back to that issue of having permission.
It's hard, sometimes, to know that I still have a bazillion emails in my inbox, or that I'm behind on my work-in-progress, and yet I'm going to do something that's always been classified as "fun."
That's why I love the idea of a schedule, a routine for reading.
Because, frankly, adding something to my routine is the best way I have for protecting it, and for proving its importance to myself.
Mmmm. But what would that look like now?
I've been mentally browsing the possibilities, remembering how I used to get my reading in.
Sometimes, it was the last forty-five minutes or so of my writing day, a late-afternoon habit. But it got too easily pushed out of the way by other projects.
Then I experimented with a once-a-month reading holiday, which was glorious, but also felt a bit exhausting too.
And then, for the longest time, reading was my last act for the day. Cramming words into my head before turning out the light, hoping to brew dreams from my reading material.
I still love the peace of that, but my days have been too hectic, and I'm too exhausted to read before bed. Which feels weird, but ... it's true.
So I'm looking for a new time slot for reading.
I love how Heather Sellers talks about reading in Page after Page. She writes,
You can't get too far off track as a writer if you are reading. ... Writers read. Reading completes the gesture. Reading is what we do. An enormous part of learning how to write better is learning how to read, sensitively, attuned to all the colors and emotions. ... The best way to tune your ear for this work is to read with passion and abandon.
WHOA. Right?!
That's such a helpful, corrective message for me. Something I need to keep hearing.
Because I always know, in my head, that reading is important, that it isn't just "for fun," that it's something that must be part of my daily life.
But I sometimes forget it with my heart. It feels like I'm stalling, procrastinating, dodging the more difficult tasks.
It's a false belief that I have to just keep shedding, over and over again.
A couple of pages later, Sellers adds,
I like to read, like Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty ... in the morning, before I talk, before I write.
WELL. That just sounds like the most delicious possible start to the day.
And it got me thinking of one of my favorite reading memories. One morning, after an early drop-off at the airport, I came home around 5:45 and felt too awake to try and sleep again.
So I made tea and found some lemon biscotti. I sat by the window reading A Very Long Engagement, savoring the beautiful prose and the tea and the sunrise.
... Which is also why I always love the opening of the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, watching Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet starting her day with 1) a walk across English countryside, and 2) a good book.
Mmmm.
... Okay, so, seriously, I just fell into a little daydream about that.
Here's the thing: it is so easy for me to realize and affirm that if I put writing first in my day, it'll get done.
SUPER important. Super worthwhile.
And what about reading—the other half of a writer's job? When does that get the best schedule treatment?
I want that level of intentionality with my reading.
So I'm wondering about shifting my reading to the morning.
(Just typing that feels rebellious somehow!!)
Maybe not every day. Maybe twice a week.
Oooh.
I love that. I love that! It feels like a good change.
So, how about you? If reading is of critical importance to a writer—and it totally is!—then where does reading fit into your life?
Do you have a specific time when you make sure you get to it? Or is it kind of "whenever it happens"?
What tricks do you have for preserving your reading time? Or is it time to shake things up, start a new reading routine?
Wanna join me for morning reading? I'd love to know in the comments!
P.S., And yes, I did finish reading my first novel of the month! It was a good story, but A Thread of Grace felt like too heavy of a read, with all the heartbreaking news and the tragedies that have been happening lately.
Whew! I need a lighter book for my second read, just to give my heart a break. So, I'm going back to an easier-for-me category of fairytale retellings, with Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Here goes!
