Dipping In and Out of Books

Read. Write. Publish. Repeat. In any order.

Ahhh. Books!

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Endings and Beginnings.

The one-year memoir incubator with Minda Honey is over.

Now what?

I feel like I am so close to finishing this book, if only I could find the time to keep my butt in the chair and write. And rewrite. And revise. But when you’re immersed in work—the kind that you are being paid to do, the so-called day job (even if it is something you would do, have done, for free) it’s so hard to pull away. Add to that a vacation that set you back and you can see how it is that I haven’t touched the manuscript in a month.

In the interim, I received my critique notes from the memoir group, and I’m excited to finally look at them. It’s great to get so much positive feedback, affirming really, but now I’m finding myself eager to work on the book and very little time to do so. One thing that my friend Charlotte, also in the memoir group, and I have both thought would be helpful is an ongoing workshop group where we can share pages as we go.

I’ve also gotten out of the habit of reporting to my writing desk downstairs.

In a perfect world, I would disappear into a retreat where I could set aside everything but the writing. For how long? A week? A month? A year? I am craving isolation. Not of the pandemic sort. Just the quiet kind where I can hear myself think.

I’m going to have a find a way. Winter is a quiet(er) time in Inlandia.

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Meanwhile, I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

I’ve just about doubled my reading from last year. Yes, I’m a dork. Yes, I created a spreadsheet. In 2023, I read 25 books. About two per month. It’s only October and I’ve read 48. Of those, I’ve read 17 memoirs. In September and October, I listened to Know My Name by Chanel Miller, who was raped by that Stanford swimmer Brock Turner. I also read Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger and Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway. I also recently read The Chronology of Water by Lydia Yuknavitch and You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith as well as a completely novel one, The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck, who documented his cross-country trip in a covered wagon with his brother Nick along the Oregon Trail.

But sort of as a chaser, because some of those memoirs can be intense, I’ve read a couple of short story collections: Exhalation by Ted Chiang and Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks, the latter of which was surprisingly good. Exhalation was of course excellent, because Ted Chiang, but when a celebrity writes a book it’s often underwhelming. But I was intrigued by the Hanks’ book because of his love for typewriters, which is a love of mine too, and the fact that each of the stories had a typewriter in it. I also read a novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. It’s been a mix of audio, physical, and the very occasional e-book. (I also read about seventeen poetry collections in August for the Sealey Challenge.)

It helps to be immersed in words, and once I finish one book I am eager to start another. Years ago, I bought my younger son a copy of Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang after he expressed interest in reading them. I love the movie Arrival, which is adapted from the short story Story of Your Life, so I’ve pulled that one off the shelf and that is my bedtime read. But I also always like to have an audiobook queued up for when I’m driving around. I have the physical copy of Gabi, a girl in pieces by Isabel Quintero, but I’ve had it for ten years (this is the ten year anniversary!) and since I still haven’t read it, I’ve now checked out the audiobook version, which I’m loving.

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Even the Kiddie Pool Feels Deep if You’re a Small Fish

I’ve also, of course, been hanging out in the deep end of the pool, helping to bring other people’s books into the world. I’m really excited about upcoming Inlandia Books. My latest column for Inlandia Literary Journeys talks a bit about that.

That photo at the top? Those neat stacks of books are inventory. We just finished counting everything up. It deserves its own post but let’s just say its good to know what you’ve got, and what you’re missing. Dare I say it was almost fun? It feels good to have everything sorted and in one place and not a mish-mosh.

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The Book Wall

In my old house, there was a room addition that had been converted from outdoor patio. The old sliding glass doors were still intact but not entirely functional, so one day my husband and I decided to remove them ourselves. Then, we had kids, and with those kids we had about a million toys, and that addition became their playroom. So we didn’t have to look at it all the time, we used a dozen Ikea Billy bookshelves to create a false wall, e.g. the Book Wall. I am terrible about getting rid of books so we had no problem filling them. Now, in our new-old house (built in 1908!) those bookshelves had to be dispersed around the house. Three in an upstairs hallway for the outgrown kids books. One in my son’s room. One in our den. And an L-shaped configuration downstairs in what we now call The Library.

No matter how I look at it, I am walled in by books.

Three sides: Reading. Writing. Publishing. But at least there is still one open side for now. I like seeing books from all angles—writer, reader, publisher. Each has its benefits and its burdens.

If ever you can’t find me, check under the nearest pile of books.