I needed a book that would warm up a hunger for writing. I needed something that would kick-start my juices and keep them flowing as well as they possibly could. It’s possible, maybe, that people write well–better, even–under stress. I can understand that; I wrote all my school papers last minute and turned in the first drafts as finals. I think it was the stress of time that got me going, though, and as a full-time employee with too much work to bring home, I no longer have the possibility of creating writing goals. I’ve never been good at long-term goals, and I’ve certainly never been good at “personal goals;” if other people aren’t counting on me, or if I’m not trudging along with a group of people (think Nanowrimo, which is currently in the back of my mind as well), I find it hard to stick to self-constructed goals and time frames.

My life has been one weird, big, understandably discomforting ball of stress the past few months. I moved out of my apartment and lost all my independence by moving in with my parents. I told everyone and convinced myself it was “just temporary,” only for “a few months;” I needed to “gather myself financially” and “figure things out.” It was all true, and still more or less is, except I didn’t count on my time at my parents’ house being so incredibly stressful. Among other reasons, I have no privacy, which makes it very difficult to read (they have the TV going almost 24/7, and as someone who spent the last year or more without television to even blare on in the background, it’s become a particularly irritating noise). Reading is my escape. Failing that, I like to write. However, I can’t write when I’m stressed, because there’s to much of the “else” on my mind to concentrate on anything specific.

This is also why I haven’t been able to write reviews (not that I’ve been reading much anyway). Or posts in my personal blog. (Plus my Internet has gone above and beyond all expectations in unreliability. It’s quite impressive.)

In any case, it seems to be picking up, maybe because of some things I can’t yet mention (they’re not set in stone), maybe because I’ve realized I need to take more time for me… I’ve been more creative lately, and might even have a redesign for this site soon. Most importantly, though, I’ve been reading. I finished some books I started before the summer began, and others I started and finished within a week. I’m happy it’s coming back to me, and I hope that means I can start writing here again.

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg has been a big help. I haven’t written on every prompt, but I’ve written on enough to make this book one of my Top 5 for any aspiring writers, and I quickly told all my writer friends about it as soon as I’d read just the first few chapters. (Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life is also on that list, as well as [your favorite book here], because it might always be the kind of inspiration you need to get something going.) Even if one of the prompts don’t get me, one of her tales does; I rarely pick up this book, even just to reread, and don’t find something pop into my head, some idea I can hash out. It’s all about sitting down and writing and ignoring that nagging itch that you’re not good at it, or it’s not worth it, or your ideas stink. In the end, they never do. You always feel a little proud, even if you’re afraid to show anyone. Wild Mind helps you conquer those fears and get your words out.

Also: the graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I can always count on him to respark some kind of hope that I’ll be able to sit through a whole book again, because I can never put his down. In the past month, my reading bug has come back (thankfully), and I’ve been reading some of those books about books I’ve collected in my many years of spending money on things I don’t necessarily need. Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg was an unexpected semi-thriller; I didn’t read further on the dust jacket than “Angel was a bookseller.” I do like the ones set in bookstores, despite this book’s claim that literary novels don’t sell. I couldn’t put this down, though the ending seemed quick. I thought a bit about that; the endings seem quick in a lot of the books I’ve been reading lately, and I wonder if that’s because I care about the characters and don’t want it to end, or because I’m actually recognizing a change in pace, a “rush” to get things done in time for the publication date or whatever else may have caused the book to end so abruptly. It seems like most of the books I’ve read have done that (though certainly not all of them). Do you find that most of what you read tends to feel rushed/abruptly end?

Sometime at the beginning of the summer I picked up The Glamorous (Double) Life of Isabella Bookbinder by Holly McQueen which was good to start, interesting as it went along, but annoying in the end. I don’t mean plotwise; it wasn’t like anything I’d read before, had the necessary twist. But I didn’t like the main character. I found her so annoying that I kept hoping that she’d fail in the end. Yes, that’s right; I wanted the heroine of the novel to fall. I wanted the villians to win! They did their job; they were written correctly. I wanted them to suffer as much as they deserved, but they were still plainly less irritating than Isabella Bookbinder, who lied to everyone in her life constantly, cared only about her appearance, and was actually incredibly stupid. All the same, I’ve always thought a book that gets a reaction out of someone must have been pretty well written (unless it was the bad writing which caused the reaction–not so in this case, unless you consider writing a disliked main character ‘bad writing’), so on my end it’s one of those “pick it up and see how you like it, though I didn’t really” recommendations.

Otherwise I’ve been getting rude comments about my reading of Mein Kampf (not a book to read on an airplane, apparently), I started Peter Rushforth’s Pinkerton’s Sister and quickly realized that since I’ve never read Jane Eyre I probably won’t understand it very well, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has finally made an appearance in my house and will likely be devoured soon. All in all, it’s been a terrible summer for my reading habits, but I hope this fall they’ll pick up and I can get back into reviewing again. I finally have a bedside lamp, and I plan to make very good use of it!