Sunday, January 24, 2010

I Seem to be Broken

Something very odd is happening -- disturbing, even.

I haven't finished a novel in three or four months.

Even worse, the last one I did finish was... Twilight.

I was reading it as a break from Gravity's Rainbow, which I never did finish.

I used to average a novel or two per week, and now I can't seem to relax into a novel at all.  Believe me, I've tried.  I have a stack of great books by authors I love, all with bookmarks less than fifty pages in.

I really don't know what happened.  I suppose it *might* have something to do with negligible free/alone time and that being interrupted every three seconds.  Or it might have something to do with taking up writing seriously and the way I feel guilty when I'm not working on it.

But now I think I'm starting to feel some negative effects of novellessness.  I'm having trouble single-tasking on anything except writing, as if my brain is rewiring.  Maybe reading novels is actually a useful mental practice after all, like yoga.

Well, I hereby give myself permission to read one novel per month even at the expense of other chores.  Let's see if that helps.

3 comments:

  1. It sounds like you're feeling restless whenever you're not writing. I hope your plan works!

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  2. That's about the healthiest mental exercise I've seen anyone write in a long time. Good for you.

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