Tag: WIPs

Reading…or lack thereof

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’m allowing myself a good reason for not reading anything new for quite some time: I’ve been mostly rereading my active WIPs and reacquainting myself with them for future work. But to be perfectly honest, I haven’t done any major reading in quite some time.

It could be that working through the 1,700-page, two-hardcover version of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In might have fried my brain earlier in the year, but I just don’t find myself wanting to actively read these last couple of months other than the occasional manga or my own stuff. I’m not even overly excited about all that many recent genre books lately, which is a bit of a surprise. No fault of the authors or their novels, mind you — I’m just assuming this is just a temporary literary burnout. I’m still buying some titles of my favorite authors or books that intrigue me and saving them for later. Supporting the authors and my local indie bookstore and all that.

When am I going to return back to reading for the enjoyment of it? Good question. I’m not going to let it worry me too much because I’ve gone through this before in the past. It’s just a phase. I’m just going to continue focusing on my own writing for a bit, and once that’s finished I’ll see where I go from there. My bedside TBR pile will be dusted off and ready to go when I’m ready myself.

Getting back to reading

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I was doing so well, too. I’ve already hit my GoodReads goal of 80 books for the year (which, yes, includes manga and a few rereads) and I’ve still got three more months’ worth of reading to go. And my Mount Read Me pile is well under control. So what’s happening?

Well, what’s happening is that I felt like reading what I have so far of my current three WIPs. And when that happens, I sometimes fall into a habit of digging through my Dropbox files to find other files to read. I get into a habit of rereading some of my own writing that ends up lasting for a good couple of weeks. There’s also the fact that I bought a new tiny tablet (a Lenovo Tab 7, 3rd Gen) and I just want to play with it for a while. SO! What to do…? I’ve already caught up with Story So Far reading (status: they’re definitely rough drafts but they all have promise), so there’s really no reason for me to keep this up.

Time to get back to reading other peoples’ work. I mean, this is exactly how I find inspiration and influence, right? I have a few ‘I will read anything by them’ authors in this TBR pile, along with some titles that were suggested from others or from Publishers Weekly, and I even have a smallish pile of older music bios that I haven’t gotten through yet. I’ve proven to myself that most of these books I can fly through in a few days, so I can clear that pile by the end of the year if I so choose.

Meanwhile, the WIPs will always be there on my cloud if I need to read them again. I probably won’t for another couple of months or until one or more of them are finally finished, whichever comes first. And if I desperately need to goof off on my tablet again, I did download the Nook app on it, and I have at least a dozen or so books there as well!