The Art of Percolating

When I’m actively writing, whether its creatively or professionally for my job, sometimes I’ll stop and “percolate” on what I need to write next. Usually this happens when I have a strong sense of what I need to write and/or the tone I need to convey, but no clear plan for how to tackle it. Especially for creative writing, I tend to plan out the action and dialog in scenes before I write them. I may not (and often don’t) stick to that outline 100% but it helps reduce the cognitive load for me when I’m writing so I can focus on things like the emotionality of the scene or making intuitive connections to other things happening in the story. But if I’m sitting at my computer and that plan isn’t coming together in my head, I know I need to percolate.

For me, percolating is when I put my writing on the “backburner” of my mind. I’m not actively thinking about it, so there’s also no pressure or mental resources going toward solving whatever problem I’m grappling with. But I know it’s there. It’s kind of like that phenomenon of creativity striking people when they’re in the shower. Sometimes when your mind isn’t actively feeling the pressure to work on a problem, it can actually figure it out more effectively.

That different than (again, for me) procrastinating, which would be more like I don’t think about and ultimately forget what I’m working with. I can’t really say how I percolate rather than procrastinate. It’s just something that I instinctively can do.

I’ve been thinking about my percolating process (or lack thereof) the past few days since I’ve been using it to start the planning process for two new chapters I’m adding to my current work-in-progress. I’m adding these chapters because I know I need to amp up the tension in that part of the story and for story structure reasons, if I add one chapter I need to add another. I had been percolating so long that yesterday I started to wonder if it was slipping into procrastination.

The first of the new chapters would use a chunk from a scene I had already written, but I needed to let my mind relax and bubble on the back burner of my consciousness to figure out how to best elaborate on that snippet. I actually figured that out pretty quickly and a plan popped into my head after only a day or two of percolation. I could have/ should have sat down and typed out that plan that day and then percolated some more for the second chapter, but at the time I was thinking I might as well wait for the second chapter plan to come to me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t happening.

Today, I sat down and typed out that plan for the first of the new chapters and it became pretty obvious why the second chapter wasn’t magically coming together. I realized because that chapter was 1) added more so for story structure than plot I already had planned, and 2) will be so heavily dependent on the other chapter to flesh out that missing plot, I couldn’t plan it now. Even with the benefits of percolation. I need to write the first chapter and then determine where should I go from there, what tension points I could pull out and use the extra space in the second chapter to really hammer home. Although I plan scenes and chapters, I don’t (usually) fill them out with such detail or stick to them so stubbornly that I know exactly what will happen. It’s pretty common for me to deviate from that plan, especially if I feel I need to really emphasized a character interaction or emotion that’s popped up. I need to see where this chapter goes before I can continue from it.

So that’s my plan tomorrow. This definitely isn’t a time to return to percolation. Maybe after I have the chapter written and I have an intuitive scenes of what I can focus on in the next chapter, but until then my mind needs to be focused on getting words onto the page.

To wrap up this post, please enjoy A Guide to Novel Writing for Intuitive Plotters from editor Ellen Brock. It’s part of a series of videos about four types of novel writers (Methodological Plotter, Methodological Pantser, Intuitive Plotter, Intuitive Pantser) and what writing strategies may work for them. Somewhat nonsensically, I found myself identifying most with both Intuitive Plotting and Methodological Pantsing. I highly recommend the whole series.

VSS 365: Illusive

I’m still not sure how to log my VSS works on this blog. At first I thought I would put them all on a dedicated page, but that might get overwhelming after a while. Then I thought they should each be their own blog entry, but then I’d have to blog every day and I don’t think I can commit to that at this point. For now, I think I’m going to do a mix of the two, put them on the page but also blog about them when inspiration strikes. At least until I can come up with a better system.

Today’s #vss365 (at least on Bluesky where I follow it) was illusive. For each vss365 I write a micro-story and an acrostic poem inspired by the word. Both formats challenge me in different ways. Here were today’s creations:

Prose:

They were tracking the elusive Blue Bird of Happiness whose joyful blessing would banish all suffering from their life. After searching high and low but finding nothing they had to face the difficult truth. A life without suffering is an #illusive dream. #vss365

I had the idea for this story immediately and I was surprised it came in well under the 300 character limit. Usually I’m either right at the limit or over it and need to pair down. That’s one of the reason I really like writing a little story in (usually) 3 lines. I have to practice intentional brevity and figure out what are the most essential components of the story. There’s no room for filler in 300 characters. This time I could have elaborated more. I briefly thought of adding more description or explanation to “finding nothing”. Ultimately, I kept it as it was. Sometimes less is more.

Acrostic:

Ignore
Loose
Lies
Upstaging
Sense
Imbibe
Verifiable
Evidence

#illusive #vss365 #poetry (normally I add #acrostic but I forgot it this time. Oops.)

As usual, the acrostic challenged me. I’m not a poetry-minded person so if I’m going to write a poem, I need a “gimmick” to give me structure and focus. There will be no freeform poems coming from my hand anytime soon. I like the acrostic format for these because it forces me to practice flexible thinking even more so than the micro-story. Usually with the micro-story, I can use the first idea that pops into my head as long as I pair it down enough. With the acrostic, the first idea inspired by the word of the day might not work if I can’t fit that idea to the letters I’m giving. There are only so many words that start with X and if there’s an X in the target word, I gotta make it work. This time around, it was the second “i” that was throwing me off. I knew I wanted a verb. I knew I (initially) wanted a verb that meant something like follow or listen to. That wasn’t working out so I tried to think of any verb the starts with “i” Pretty quickly I landed on imbibe (it might have helped that I was walking my dog past a brewery at that moment) and while it didn’t fit my original plan, it worked and added a stronger poetic air than if I could have used something as straight forward as follow.

To close out this entry, enjoy a photo of the blue bird of happiness that inspired my micro-story:

Friday Failures: To Trust Your Gut is To Ignore Your Gut

Originally, I planned to post my writing reflections on weekends to reflect on what I’d written and learned over the week but since I like the alliteration of “Friday Failures” and I assume most of the reflections will involve me reflecting on a mistake or issue I learned from, we’re starting the failure reflections today. For today’s entry, I’m reflecting on a chapter I wrote over the weekend. As I was writing this chapter, I felt that something was off. After getting feedback and thinking through how to fix it, I’ve taken away three little lessons to improve my craft:

1. The movie in your mind doesn’t always translate to the page.
2. Trust your gut.
3. Also, ignore you gut… strategically.

This particular chapter is part of a contemporary romance I’m working on. A crucial piece of the conflict in the chapter revolved around the female main character (FMC) revealing a damning video she has of her ex essentially harassing the male main character (MMC) who is her new love interest. I had a clear vision of how everything would play out in my head, which normally for me leads to smooth writing. In the movie in my mind, she whips out this video on her phone in a quick, triumphant victory to get her ex to leave with his tail between his legs in this public shaming. In practice, as soon as I started writing the reveal of the video and the description of what the video showed, I knew it didn’t work. Hence lesson one. It would have/ could have been a good movie scene, but it felt clunky on paper

On to lesson two. In trusting my gut, I knew something was wrong with these scene beyond what I could edit at that time. I thought maybe this isn’t the right point in the story for this scene or it didn’t work with everything else happening in the chapter. Fortunately, I have a family member who is also writing a romance and was willing to read over the chapter. (I should probably add Lesson 2.1: Find feedback partners whose opinions you can trust).

The feedback she gave me made immediate sense. While the confrontation worked in theory and was placed at a logical point in both my FMC and MMC’s character arcs, the execution took her out of the story. I realized the video essentially acted as a flashback but I wasn’t treating it like a flashback. She also pointed out the chapter was from my FMC’s point of view, but the event in the video and the reaction to the video are really all about the MMC’s point of view and feelings. After thinking it through, I realized that while I need to announce the video in her chapter (shocking chapter ending!), I need to reveal what’s in the video in a new chapter where I can take the time to explore his thoughts and feelings during that past harassing confrontation and then return to the present to explore his feelings (potential embarrassment, feeling emasculated that it seems like he couldn’t defend himself in the past or present, etc.). Once I started thinking this through, it was such an obvious improvement that will hopefully make that part of the story more enjoyable to read while also deepening his character and add another little (resolvable) conflict to their path towards romance.

And finally lesson 3. In the past, as soon as I had a gut feeling something I was writing wouldn’t work out, I would have stopped writing. History, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what or how to fix it has been my main (and possibly only) source of writer’s block. I would have told myself something along the lines of whatever I write, I’m not going to end up using it and I should stop to avoid wasting my time. I would have instead taken a break and tried to work out the problem in my head. In this case, if I had paused and not continued writing, I don’t think I would have mentally worked out what the problem was.

Luckily because the initial the video reveal was so brief, I could power through it and get to the argument between FMC, MMC, and the ex. By having something written but also trusting my gut that something didn’t work, I was able to get the feedback I needed to realize what didn’t work so I can fix it. And while I likely will have to make major changes to what I’ve written, at least I have a starting point on paper for the revised chapter and the new one I’ll be developing. This is actually a huge lesson for me and I really hope I internalize enough that I can power through the next time I have a moment where I know what I’m writing has a problem but don’t know what it is.

To close out this point, enjoy a cliche quote on success and failure:

Resurrecting the Ol’ Writing Blog

I was driving to work today and I had the urge to return to this blog. And then obviously, I had to get through my work day and drive back home. It’s been six years since my last entry. During my commute, I mentally refined what I’d like to use this blog for and while I won’t necessarily be pivoting away from how I was previously blogging, I anticipate having more a routine posting schedule and targeted purpose with my entries.

Purpose #1: Reflect on my growth as a writer

I’ve grown a lot as a writer over the years and recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what works and what does not work for me. One of those things that works is having a daily writing habit. I’ve been doing this in part by following the Very Short Stories 365 (#vss365) tag on social media (see purpose #2), but this blog is also a natural place to both foster a daily writing habit and pair it with a daily (or near) daily habit on reflecting on my writing practice, how I’ve grown my skills, current challenges I’m grappling with, etc.

Purpose #2: Better house social media writing

Once upon a time, I used Twitter and regularly posted short stories and acrostic poems with the #vss365. I switched to BlueSky and sporadically posted #vss365 works, but that fell to the wayside a few months ago. I’ve picked up the habit again and am determined to stick with it. I think practicing writing very short pieces that force me to work within certain constraints (using a specific word, character count) helps make me a better writer by encouraging flexible thinking. I’ve really enjoyed the microfictions I’ve created, but social media is a very in-the-moment media form and I don’t think it’s the best for looking at all my microfictions over time. Also, while sometimes the character count restrictions force me to write better, other times I think the slightly longer original versions are superior. On a blog, I can post both versions and reflect on why I like one more than the other.

I envision having a few different blog post types going forward.

1. An ongoing page where I stick my #vss365 writing, particularly if I want to elaborate on anything.
2. A periodic series on writing tips and strategies that work for me. These would be opportunities for me to take a deep dive into my own thinking and habits to explore why these strategies work for me.
3. Which leads naturally into a periodic series on what doesn’t work for me. There are definitely writing tips floating around that not only don’t work for me but also torpedo my creative thinking and my writing process, so it would probably be helpful to explore that as well.
4. A weekly update where I reflect on the writing I’ve done the past week and at least one thing I’ve learned or improved in my craft. I’m currently working on two (arguably three, but one is very much on the backburner) writing projects in different genres and I definitely flex different creative writing muscles on each of them. There’s value in pausing and looking back at what I’ve accomplished and any stumbling blocks I’ve surmounted, since that’s how you (or at least how I) no only improve but maintain those improvements.
5. Book reviews! Because if I’m writing but I’m not reading, what I am even doing? These will focus on my experience as a reader (what worked for me, what didn’t work for me) and how I can take that knowledge and use it to improve the reader experiences in my own writing.
6. The writing scene in Baltimore, Maryland. I live here. I love living here. I need to get more tapped into the local writing community because right now… I am not. And as I go on an adventure to fix that egregious oversight, I want to blog about it.

As an outro, I have to reflect on changes to WordPress since I last used it six years ago. The whole blog entry writing experience is definitely different. I’m tempted to say I don’t like it as much but I honestly don’t remember the old experience and I’ll probably get used to this new look and feel soon enough. What I don’t think I’ll get used to or use is the “Improve with AI” feature. They’ve been pushing AI at work. I’ve tried it in a vocational context. I continue to be unimpressed.

Pondathon Read-A-Thon

It’s been a long time (+1 year), my blog, but for 2020, I want to give you a little more love. Starting with Pondathon!

This is a story-driven read-a-thon created by The Quiet Pond, that will be running from 1/24/2020 to 3/7/2020. There’s a schedule of events/ side quests/ challenges that will be happening during the readathon to be revealed (presumably) as we move through the weeks.  Right now, they’re in the character-designing, team-joining phase. There are five teams to join:

Team Xiaolong – Gain points for your team based on the length of the books/audiobooks you read each day, with bonus points each time you finish a book

Team Varian – Gain points for your team by reading books in different genres, with bonus points for chain three books from three different genres

Team Gen – Gain points for your team by reading books published before December 31st, 2018, with bonus points for reading books with fewer than 3,000 ratings on Goodreads

Team Sprout – Gain points for your team by featuring the diverse books you read on your blog/bookstagram/bookstube/etc., with bonus points for also recommending four more diverse books to your followers

Team Cuddle – Gain points for buddy reading your books, with bonus points for budding reading with people from Team Cuddle

Since I have a massive backlist of books and am trying to read down books I already own this year, I joined Team Gen. My character: a book-loving turtle. Hopefully that won’t jinx me into reading very slowly. I did a count of my owned books, and at least 82 were written before 12/21/2018 (I stopped counting with many more books left, since 82 was already more than I’d ever read in 6 weeks). Let’s see how many I can read before March 7th!

 

 

Halloween Reads Review

I got so caught up in NaNoWriMo 2018 that I forgot to post about which of my Halloween Reads I got through. My plan had been to read:

1. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
2. Contagion by Erin Bowman
3. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
4. Sadie by Courtney Summers
5. The Lies We Told by Camilla Way

The Westing Game I read in a day, and I probably should’ve read it back when I was a kid and in the book’s target reader demographic. I genuinely enjoyed the book and thought the mystery was interesting. The book would have gotten 5 stars out of 5 from me… if it weren’t for one particular character. Turtle, one of the major characters, was not my favorite. I’m generally not a fan of “child genius” characters, or genius characters in general, because I find them unbelievable. Not because child/adult genius don’t exist but because a character can only be as smart as the person(s) writing them (and statistically speaking, whoever is writing that genius is probably not a genius, no offense to writers of geniuses). So Turtle was cast as a preternaturally smart kid, largely because she was interested in and understood the stock market. I’ll grant that she had some smarts, but she spent so much of book trying to solve the mystery puzzle in a very self-focused way — rather than focusing on the mindset of the man who created the mystery puzzle — that I couldn’t give her intelligence too much credit. Also, her self-focused solution to the mystery and her childish behavior towards other characters (like her habit of kicking people’s shins when they made her angry) made me think that she was much younger than she actual was. I was putting her age between 8 and 10 years, and then 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through the book you find out she’s actually 13 or 14. What? Really didn’t like Turtle and while overall I liked the ending, I found the resolution to her particularly story and the roll she played in the mystery completely unbelievable, so 4 out of 5 stars for this book. Okay, I’ll get off my anti-Turtle soapbox now (I clearly had some ranty feelings about her.)

I don’t know why it took me so long to start reading Contagion but I enjoyed it. For me, it was another 4 out of 5 star book and I will be reading the sequel (Immunity) that comes out next Spring. However, it’s a low 4 stars and I would have rated it a 3 out of 5 if it weren’t for the last 1/3 of the book. Even though the story is fast-paced, the beginning 1/3 of the book didn’t engage me much so it took me a much longer time to read than it should’ve. A lot of time is spent introducing the eight main/ only characters, which I normally don’t mind, but I didn’t particularly care about these characters and honestly I can’t say I cared much more about them by the ending. I do care enough about their fates to read the sequel, though. Another issue I had is that while the book regularly raises the stakes, as seven of the characters are crew members investigating a tragedy that occurred on an isolated planet, these raised stakes depend almost entirely on the incompetence of the crew leader. The whole book, all the other characters acknowledge her incompetence, and to a certain extent ignore or undermine her authority, which I found… annoying. It definitely decreased my enjoyment of those moments and I wish the author had created the conflicts and dead ends that she did without having them be the result of the crew leader’s poor decision-making. (The fact that the incompetent leader was also a woman also got a raised eyebrow from me; however, the other women in the story were fairly capable and competent so that wasn’t a problematic as it could have been).

I’m currently reading and almost in finished with The Hazel Wood, which I’m really enjoying. It’s the perfect creepy Halloween read. The tone of the story reminds me a lot of Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tales series, given that this is a story about a girl whose grandmother wrote creepy, dark fairy tales. Aspects of the plot and the character relationships also remind me of Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley, but I like these things much more in this story as I think they work better (Magonia also suffered, IMHO, from a genius character who I often rolled my eyes at). I didn’t feel compelled to read Magonia’s sequel, but I will read The Hazel Wood‘s.

Even though I have the physical copy of Sadie, I want to listen to the audio book because there’s a podcast in the story and I’ve heard that listening to these sections gives you a better feel for the story. So I’m waiting to read this until I can get the audio book from my library.

I haven’t started The Lies We Told yet, but will as soon as I finish The Hazel Wood. My slow pace in reading the beginning of Contagion and a cold I caught as the seasons changed in October meant I didn’t get to this before Halloween, but I keep hearing it’ll be a quick read once I start it.

YA Mental Health Review: Unbroken

Unbroken: 13 Stories about Disabled Teens wasn’t originally on my YA Mental Health book TBR, but I knew I’d have to read it when I saw it at the library. This anthology was edited by Marieke Nijkamp (who also wrote one of the stories), and included short stories by William Alexander, Fox Benwell, Keah Brown, Dhonielle Clayton, Corienne Duyvis, Heidi Heilig, Kody Keplinger, Katherine Locke, Karuna Riazi, Francisco X. Stork, Kayla Whaley, and Kristine Wyllys.

It’s hard to review an anthology by different writers, since every style is different and you enjoy the stories to differing degrees. In the past, I’ve tended to like about half of what’s in the anthology while feeling the other half was just okay or straight-up not liking it. However, the majority of the stories in this anthology I liked, and there were only a few that didn’t work for me (but hopefully they work for other people).

All of the stories in this anthology are centered around teens with at least one disability, whether it’s physical or mental. The stories all generally have fairly diverse casts, in terms of the characters (MC and side characters) races and ethnicity, religion, sexual orientations, and gender identity. For most the story, the MC’s disabilities are another facet of who they are and aren’t necessarily central to the main plot/conflict, which I appreciated. Not every story that includes people with disabilities needs be hyperfocused on that disability. In these cases, the MC’s disabilities added nuances to their experiences and in some cases presented additional obstacles or problems they had to deal with in addition to the main conflict, but they weren’t the totality of who they were, which I also appreciated. (That said,  my favorite story in the collection focused on a blind cyclist and her blindness was critical to the plot.)

I actually mentioned that I was reading this book to my school’s librarian since out library doesn’t have it. We were wondering if it would be appropriate for middle schoolers or if it’s more of a high school book. There were some stories that seemed a little more advanced or mature (language-wise, in terms of profanity as well as general word choice) for most of our students, but I think I will recommend she order this for our library. She might mark it as an 8th grade and up book, though.

All in all, I really enjoyed this anthology. I’m glad to see such diverse representation of many different cultures in this book and how that resulted in stories that might not have otherwise been told. None of the stories stood out as ones I would use in an actual counseling session with one of my students, even the stories that touched on mental health topics; however, I would recommend it to students who are struggling with disabilities, as well as students who would like to learn more about what it might be like to live with a disability or be differently-abled.

One final note: I know from reading Memory of Light that Francisco X. Stork struggled with depression, and his story focused on a teen struggling with his mental health, but otherwise, I don’t know if the authors have dealt with the disabilities they wrote about or a similar disability. It does seem like the races of the characters generally matched the races of the authors, but I don’t know about sexual orientation, gender identity or religion. I only bring this up because I’m hoping that these stories are Own Voices, particularly in respect to the disabilities that are addressed, but it’s hard to say. I started reading assuming they are Own Voices, and my review probably would change if I find out they aren’t. This book and some (all?) of the authors are involved in the Diverse Books movement, so this anthology would feel a little disingenuous if it tells diverse stories without including diverse (and personally knowledgeable) writers. I think authors can and should be allowed to write about characters that are culturally distinct from them, as long as they do their due diligence to present an accurate and mindful representation of the characters, but for this anthology, it feels particularly important that the characters be written by authors who can more personality understand how their disabilities would affect their story. Which is why I’m pretty sure that is the case, I’m just not 100% positive.

Book Beginnings and Friday 56: The Lies We Told

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader, while Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.

Today I’m showcasing The Lies We Told by Camilla Way, which will be one of my Halloween Reads. I thought I’d make this my Friday book to prep for reading it, even though I decided to read the 5 books I chose for October in the order that I received them. Which means this book will last. Hopefully, my interest won’t be so piqued that I’m dying to read it and all the other books end up feeling like a slog.

Without further ado, here’s the first sentence;

At first I mistook the severed head for something else.

That line alone, which was on the Book of the Month page for this book, made me interested in choosing this for my BotM. Wow. I have so many questions.

And here’s page 56:

“[…] I love Hannah! But I know there’s something badly wrong with out little girl, and we need to get her help as soon as possible[…]”

Well, my interested is piqued. It’s not clear if the “something badly wrong” is a physical or a mental health concern, but given that this novel is  a psychological suspense, I suspect Hannah has some mental health concerns. And given that the story is about a dark family secret(s), I’m wondering how this will factor into the deception and intrigue.

 

Halloween Reads

I was a very/shockingly productive reader in September and have had a generally good year in terms of tackling my TBR list. That said, I haven’t be reading much in October. The only book I’m currently reading is Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens,  as part of my YA Mental Health Book project. However, that has been slow because I’m reading less than one story a day. The short stories are great, but I’ve been focused on other things.

When October started, I hyperfocused on my writing to 1) get prep for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and 2) get ready for Author Mentor Match (AMM), a program that matches people who are ready to query agents with writers who already have agents and are going through the publication process or already published. I felt like AMM was exactly what I needed to finally start doing something about one finished story I’ve been sitting on for a while, but since I found out about it somewhat late in the game (the applications open October 15), I’ve been rushing to get the query letter, synopsis, first few chapters, and overall manuscript ready. Because even if I don’t get selected for AMM, I want to use this momentum to keep querying.

Bottom Line: I’ve been writing and editing a lot, which is great, I just haven’t been reading.

Solution: A list of books to read in celebration of Halloween. These aren’t necessary super-Halloween-y books. They’re just books that I have, want to read, and have a creepy or suspenseful air to them, and it may be easier to make time for them if they’re tied into the season. I definitely won’t have them all finished by Halloween, but hopefully I’ve  read at least a few  so let’s see what happens. And the books are… *drum roll*

The Westing Game isn’t a creepy book (to my knowledge). I just need to read it and return it to my sister, who keeps recommending it to me. It should be a quick and easy victory to start off this project.

Contagion and Sadie were Scribbler books that I’ve already posted about. I haven’t started them, but they both seem perfect for the Halloween season. I didn’t start Sadie right away because a podcast features heavily in the narration and I therefore wanted to listen to it on audiobook.

The Lies We Told is my Book of the Month book for October. I almost selected a sci-fi book that was more up my alley (not that this one isn’t in my alley). Until I realized that elements of the plot–the family deception–are similar to elements and themes that I’m including in my largest writing project (the first part of which I’m submitting to AMM). I want to read this specifically to help inform and strengthen my own writing about deception and family intrigue.

The Hazel Wood was an impulse buy for me. I was going to get it as a library book, but the cover was too beautiful. And since it’s about dark fairy tales and a creep/supernatural woods, it fits as a Halloween read.

Anyway, hopefully by writing this post, I’m burning into my mind that I will finish the books before moving on to anything else. I don’t anticipate I’ll finish them all by October 31, but I should be done with them in November for sure.

A January through September Breakdown of Books: 2017

While writing one of my other posts the other day, it occurred to me that I’ve been mentioning quite a few male and/or white authors on my blog, and consequently fewer female authors or authors of color. Off the top of my head, I don’t know the breakdowns by other cultural groups, such as religion, sexual orientation or SES, but I imagine the group is fairly homogeneous in those respects, too. Having a diverse pool of authors to read from is important to me for several reasons. 1) I want to support authors and stories who have historically be excluded from publishing/authorship/the arts, and 2) diverse authors usually mean more diverse stories, which often means that 3) I’m getting exposed to a wider range of story ideas, conflicts, ways to problem-solve, life perspective and experiences, etc. And being exposed to and learning from all those things are a big reason that I love reading.  I want to vicariously experience things I might not otherwise.

It just so happened that while I was thinking about all of this, I stumbled on a blog post at Evelyn Reads, where she not only details the books she read for September but also broke down the books by author gender, format, page count, and her rating. I was inspired to do the same. Evelyn focuses on the 16 books she read in September (Holy cow!), but I wanted to read the books I’ve read all year, so that I can gauge my reading diet for the year, so to speak, and try to read a wider range of books by the end of the year. I’ve read 53 books so far, which sounds impressive but a bunch were graphic novels, as well as two picture books that I read so I could feel comfortable donating them to a local Little Free Library.

Here’s my breakdown of the books I read from January 1st to September 30th (okay, technically I finished The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers on October 1st, but the bulk was read/ listened to via audiobook in September so I’m counting that):

Aaaannnddd, the font size on that is way smaller than I wanted it to be. I’ll fix that at a later time. For the most part, I’m actually pretty happy with the variety of what I read. It’s heavier on the non-fiction and children/YA books than one might expect, because I read those types of books often for work.  My labeling for race/ethnicity is imperfect, but looking at it I do notice I’ve read a lot of books by white authors. I lumped Jewish in there, but it did occur to me I haven’t really thought about the religious background of the author’s I’m reading. Also the “Greek” author was Marcus Aurelius so… I wasn’t sure what to count him as. Yeah, he’s Greek but…

With the above in mind, by the end of the year, I would like to 1) have a slightly more balanced racial/ethnic breakdown of the writers that I’m reading, 2) also look at the race and gender of the MC or non-fiction target person/group, if possible, and 3) take a little more consideration into the religious backgrounds of the authors and whether this seems to impact their writing/ my experience with their writing, again if possible. There’s not a lot of time left in 2018 to change these graphs very much, but I would like to revisit this at the end of the year to see if focused attention on having more diverse reads 1) numerically changes things, and 2) changes/adds to/improve my reading experience.

It occurs to me now that I’ve finished writing this that you can tell I have a background in research/ am more analytically minded than I care to admit.