Tough Reads--getting through books you hate

Let's say you're a regular Joe. Joe the Plumber, if you don't mind old political jokes. And you've got this book you received as a gift, or picked up for a long plane ride, or whatever. You sit down to read this tome you have recently acquired...

And discover that you hate it.

Maybe it's the predictable story. Maybe it rips off a well-known myth verbatim. Maybe the characters are ninnies, or the writing is flat, or you just find yourself looking to see what page you're on and how much time has passed. Everyone has come across a book or two that they can't stand in their lifetime.

The difference between casual readers and writers, however, is what is done once this realization has come to pass. A casual reader will simply put down the book and not pick it up again. They may sell it at a garage sale, donate it to a library, take it to a used bookstore, or even recycle it. Either way, they feel no real need to finish the book anyway.

A writer is different. A writer is a little more sensitive to what stories bother them the most and why. They are the ones most likely to be ranting about how they like or dislike a book they are consuming. But the real difference between a casual reader and the writer is that the writer will finish reading the book anyway, no matter how long it takes for them to read it. Or, at least, they should.

A casual reader is the main audience of any author's work, and fights to keep their interest. The writer who reads the book is not likely to put it down because, if it is nonfiction, they plow through to get to the juicy info, even if the author has dried it out to its base components. If it is fiction, the writer will still read it, if only to pick out the reasons why they do not like the story.

It is common advice for a writer to read wildly and from many different genres. This is to make themselves aware of the cliches, mix genres, use ideas from many different places, and to inspire themselves. The main reason, though, is this: a writer has to know what they like and don't like to read. If you don't like to read it, chances are that you will hate to write it, and that will come out to the reader. Even if there are thousands of readers who enjoy, say, religious romance in their fiction, if you hate it and try to tap it anyway, for those thousands, they will know how you feel about it, and dislike your work.

Besides, it is good practice to analyze the books you read to get to the very core of what you like and don't like. That, more than a wide vocabulary or good grammar, will get you farther in your writing career.

Reading books you hate, however, is not easy. I've done it, and am stuck doing it right now. Here are some ways to get yourself through a tough book to read.

• Take breaks. (Hey! I'm doing this one right now!) If you sit and try to plow through a book you despise in a day or two, you'll just find yourself to be miserable. Life's too short for that. Instead, take a break every hour, twenty pages, or chapter, whichever works for you.
• Reward yourself. During your break, take a moment to please yourself. Maybe watch a little TV, surf the Internet, get a snack, or call a friend. Renew your spirit before you head back to that book that's driving you mad.
• Isolate yourself with it. That casual reader on the plane with the bad book will likely put it down every once in a while to stare out the window, but without any other entertainment, the book will probably get read anyway. Take the book with you when you pick up your take-out, when you have to go to the DMV, or any other time you feel like you'll have to wait a long enough time to get bored enough to read even if the writing is bad.
• Read it on the toilet. You'll visit the toilet at least a few times a day. Take these times to read a chapter or two. I'm not kidding. Just make sure not to touch the book in the time between wiping and washing your hands.
• Take notes. During your little break, take notes on what you hate and why you hate it. These notes will prove valuable when you sit down to write your own material. You'll know exactly what not to do. At the very least, you'll remember why you hate it when you complain to your loved ones about that author.

Still think it would just be easier to put the book down and forget about it? Sure. Okay. Fine. But first, write down why you hate it, please. This will be the most important information you can take from however little of the book you ingested. Then, read the rest of it, just to see if there are any other reasons why you hate it. Read sections that make you sick out loud to your loved ones. Then, remember: this guy got published, and you know you can write twenty times better than him.

Cafes--distraction or diligence?

This past Sunday was the day my local writing group (notably made up almost entirely of NaNoWriMo participants) was supposed to meet up. The planning was a little sketchy, the time based entirely on an online poll, and the place really only determined by one person's needs. So, I should not have been surprised to arrive at my nearby Barnes and Noble cafe only to discover no familiar faces amongst the study groups, newspaper-purveyors, and late-lunchers. No matter, I thought. I ordered my iced tea and found myself a tiny table in the same general area we usually met up in in the bastardized Starbucks. I decided to not waste the time by just sitting and watching the door for anyone I might know and instead elected to dig out my laptop and get started writing.

It took me about an hour and a half to finish my iced tea and about a thousand words of work on my current writing project, but with my headphones on, the time passed as if I wasn't even in the same flow. I felt accomplished, isolated in my privacy like I never would be at home.

In today's shitty economy, this may not be considered the most conservative way to get the peace and quiet (quiet, here, meaning lack of interruption, not silence) one needs to really buckle down and lose themselves in their work. Why go to a coffee shop, where to take up a table you have to order something, when you could easily just sit at your desk at home? For those that live alone, this may seem absurd, since they can get all the peace they need at home. But for those that live with their family, their spouse, or even just a couple of roommates, peace and quiet may instead seem like a luxury other writers can have but they are not blessed with.

Or maybe the opposite is true. Maybe you live with your family but are able to produce well because they know when not to bother you. Maybe you live alone, but the distractions of laundry, dishes, and other tidying keep you from just sitting down at the desk. Maybe your problem is a mix of the two, and you felt a touch of envy when I described sitting at a table in a cafe working for an hour and a half straight without so much as a nagging need to clean the toilet or a nagging mother or wife telling you to do the same.

In both Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg champions the cafe as her favorite place to write. She even relates an anecdote about her time spent near Walden Pond, like Thoreau before her, pacing before her previous seat under a tree, claiming that writing here was not going to work, that she needed a cafe. As often as she meets with writing friends for what we WriMos would call "word wars" or just to discuss stories at her cafes, as often as she goes there to sit and write in her notebooks, Goldberg had established her cafes as her writing space.

Without going into the aspects of writing spaces (That would be a whole different post altogether!), there is nothing wrong with getting out of the house once in a while to write elsewhere. Write in a library. Write in a park. Or do as Goldberg, I, and so many writers before us all have in every town imaginable, and write in a cafe.

Is it just a pointless distraction? It can be, for some. If you're at a bookstore, and are an avid reader like I suspect you are, the temptation to go out into the shelves and pick out a few new title to add to your reading pile at home may be too much. If you're there with a group, it may be easier to suppress this temptation, since you are all there to write, not to browse.

Or maybe you're there with a group, and the temptation to talk amongst each other seems to be eating not just you, but several other members as well. You can avoid this by going to the chosen public spot alone a few times and writing there. This can help you establish the place as a writing haven for you, and you'll be thinking literarily before you even sit at a table. For now, you can challenge yourself and the group to write for fifteen minutes and then, when the time is up, spend fine minutes talking about what just happened in each story and how excited you are. Then write for fifteen minutes again. You'll make bonds with your fellow writers and feel like you're really accomplishing something in that time.

If you plan to write in a coffee shop or Internet cafe:

• Buy something. Whether it be food or drink, contribute some money to the establishment that you are going to camp in, especially if it will be for several hours.

• Tip and tip generously. You are going to be taking up space that other people may have used, and you may not buy much else since you'll be more occupied with your plots than that slice of chocolate cheesecake you bought. It may be their job to just serve you your coffee or sandwich, but you are also paying for the use of their tables. Don't know how much to tip? Leave your coin change. You don't want it anyway.
• Clean up after yourself. It may be the baristas' jobs to mix you a decent espresso, but it doesn't make them happy to have to pick up your trash. Put all litter in the proper receptacles. Also, if you are in a group and change the configuration of their tables and chairs, be sure to put them back.
• Be friendly to the staff. This pays out twofold. First, you get better service, in the long run, if the baristas or wait staff enjoy their time. Second, you will develop a better relationship with them and, in turn, the place. This pays out if you plan on staking a table claim on a regular basis here. They will be more receptive to your arrival and maybe even allow you to stay longer than usual, especially if you are (see above) a good tipper. You may even hear a few stories of their own about family or guests that will make for interesting plotlines or characters in your projects.
• Seat yourself pointed at the door, or the counter. This is particularly helpful if you have writer's block. You can begin by writing descriptions of the people you see and how you imagine they live. On another note, if you are waiting for your group to arrive, you'l be much more recognizable than the back of your head.
• Don't pay for Wi-Fi. The point is to get work done. Even if you're at an Internet cafe, forgo the ability to check your e-mail, webcomics, blogs, and news sites. Even if you tell yourself that you're doing research, you are just allowing yourself the same distractions as at home. Really need that online thesaurus or dictionary? Color the word you want to replace or fact you want to confirm in a noticeable hue, and look it up when you get home. Even better? Ask your writing group for another word for such-and-such, or who they think shot first in the Revolutionary War. You may be pleasantly surprised with their answers.

If your coffee shop or Internet cafe has something that is tempting you, like a bookstore or sugary snacks, feel free to buy yourself something before you leave. But after you've accomplished your goal. Don't distract yourself during writing time.

Resolve--don't set yourself up for failure this year

A new year is upon us and with it comes the commercials for weight-loss products, the rolling of our loved ones' eyes, and the feeling of starting fresh. If you're a writer, it will be tempting to squeeze "Write Every Day" between "Get Organized" and "Quit Smoking". And this is all right. Every writer looks to a new year with the intention of writing more, especially if they feel they haven't been writing enough.

But it's important not to get carried away.

The main reason New Year's resolutions fail is because people resolve to do too much too quickly, and then abandon the attempt entirely after about a week or so. How many times have you resolved to get into shape and eat healthily, but give up the first time you go to the store and have those snack cakes crying lustily out to you from the shelf? How often have you decided to get organized, head to the closet, and realize that you have way too much junk to handle alone, and then just sit and watch TV instead? It is important that, if you want to make a difference in your writing life for the new year, to not try to write a poem a day or a novel every month, especially if you haven't been writing much recently anyway.

So what should you do instead?

• Make sensible resolutions. It may seem sensible on New Year's Eve to resolve to write a thousand words a day, but when New Year's Day rolls around and you aren't feeling it, you may come to resent coming to the desk. That isn't the point of writer's resolutions. Instead, you could resolve to do something small and writerly, like write in your journal every day, write at least one sentence a day, try to finish a small project by the end of the month.
  
• Don't be so hard on yourself. So you spend New Year's Day avoiding the desk by taking down holiday decorations, or by playing with all that new stuff you got last week, or even hide from it in bed claiming to have a headache. When the day is over and no writing has been done, you throw the blanket off your head and think, "Well, I've missed the first day of the year. The first day and my resolution is gone! I must not be cut out for this." Then you decide to give up on writing every day completely. I have only one thing to say to these people: NO! Just because you slip up does not mean that you have failed. It only means that you missed an opportunity; an opportunity that will be there tomorrow just as much as today. One skipped day does not mean the rest of the year is ruined. You just try again the next day.
• A year is a long time; think instead in months, or even weeks. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the length of time when it comes to writing. Write every day? For a whole year? What if you have something come up? Instead of thinking is such broad terms, think smaller. This week, write every day. Next week, maybe you'll do something else. Take your resolution one step at a time.
• Start today. You'll notice that today is not January First. But what is January First if not just a day? You could start again on that failed resolution that you've already abandoned today. New Year's Day is not a magical day, and neither is the first of any month, or any Sunday, or Monday. Every day is just a day, and a day with an opportunity. Want to write every day this year? Write today. Something. Anything. Put pen to paper. Open a word processor. Write about how writing is hard. Write about how not starting on the first day of the year is stupid. Write about how your family is irritating and your middle wide and your sleeping patterns wonky. Write about whatever is on your mind, but write.