Jennifer M. Baldwin

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Reading Challenge (Day 4)

August 9, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Thank goodness for my book club and our Tuesday meetings! I wasn’t quite finished with the reading section for this week, so today was pretty easy to get my two hours in. Having the deadline put the pressure on (and having to be accountable to the book club gang helped too).

It also helped that I picked up the book first thing in the morning and read for about thirty minutes before I did anything else. I know it has become a cliche to talk about the “miracle morning” or whatever the productivity gurus call it, but there’s a lot of truth to getting things done first thing in the morning. Even if I only read for ten minutes, or work on my fiction for a minute or two, or edit a page for a client, if I do it first thing in the morning, the rest of the day goes so much better. No matter what happens in the afternoon or evening, if I work a little bit on all my projects and challenges in the morning, the day feels successful. I also end up working more throughout the day because I’ve already jumped started everything in the morning.

The book club book this time around is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Highly recommended. It’s historical literary fiction, which is a genre I don’t read often, but whenever I do, I end up enjoying it. Historical fiction is great for fantasy and science fiction writers to read and study because the attention to detail and world-building often demonstrate the same skills a speculative fiction author needs to have. 1930s Korea and Japan are as unfamiliar to me as a secondary world in a fantasy novel might be. I love how Min Jin Lee is able to make the world come alive in my imagination. Very vivid writing, and the plot and characters are highly engaging. I’m about 200 pages into it so far, and frankly, I didn’t want to stop reading earlier this evening when I finished the section we were assigned for book club.

Basically, I know what I’ll be doing first thing tomorrow morning. Gotta find out what happens to Sunja, Yoseb, and Kyunghee!

Reading Challenge (Day 3)

August 8, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Challenges like this are good because they help me plow through some books that I otherwise would get bogged down in. Case in point: the Clark Ashton Smith collection I started reading a few months ago. The second story (“The Red World of Polaris”) has been a slog, and I’d been stuck on it forever, but today I finished it. The two-hour-a-day reading challenge has pushed me to read as much as I can in whatever spare moments I have, so I simply pushed myself to finish the “Polaris” story and rack up my minutes for the day.

Same goes with the Jonathan Hickman Avengers run. I’d been enjoying it, but kept getting stuck.  I couldn’t get into a rhythm with it. But this challenge has helped me stay focused and keep reading.

I think that’s been my problem with book reading lately.

Focus.

Internet reading has disrupted my ability to focus. I know everyone has experienced this — we all know that our attentions have been arrested by the web — but I can really feel it as I try to read for two hours each day. I can feel my attention flagging at times, and then I get the desire to put aside the book and pick up my phone. But having the challenge gives me motivation to resist the distractions and keep reading. It’s the same when Lent rolls around and I give up the internet totally (except for work stuff); the challenge of giving something up for Lent motivates me to keep going.

These kinds of challenges seem to work (so far) when it comes to giving something up or reading or studying or practicing or whatever, but the weird thing is they don’t seem to motivate me for writing. Challenges like NaNoWriMo were often a bummer because I just couldn’t get myself to stick to them. Maybe the task was too big. But reading books for two hours each day has been pretty big, even in just these first few days, and yet I have found a way to make it work.

I guess reading is simply an easier task for me than writing. I guess with reading there is no perfectionism to deal with. I can’t really “fail” at reading unless I don’t read for my two hours each day. But with writing, even if I write for two hours, there’s the chance of failure. There’s the chance that what I write will be shitty. I think this is what makes writing challenges too hard for me. Fear of doing it badly. I can definitely write for many hours in a day; my writer’s notebook is proof of that. But the writer’s notebook is private, it’s just me mucking around. It’s not meant to “be” anything other than a place to experiment. I can write pages upon pages in my notebook each day without a second thought. There’s no real “failure” with the notebook because there are no expectations.

But writing a story, or an essay, or even a blog post like this means there are expectations. There is good and there is bad. And when I start to think of my expectations for a story or essay or blog post, then I start to freeze up. Then there’s a chance for failure. Fear rears its ugly head.

Giving up the internet for Lent isn’t really something I can do “badly.” I either stay off the internet or I don’t, so as long as I stay off, I win. Same for my two-hour reading challenge. As long as I read for the requisite amount of time, I can’t do it badly.

But writing for an audience can turn out badly. It can suck. Somehow I need to get over these fears and do a writing challenge.

I suppose I could do a time-related challenge, i.e.: sit at my computer for two hours with my manuscript in front of me. Or I could do a word count challenge that’s manageable (like 500 words per day). Or a story-per-day challenge. I was doing a word count challenge earlier in the year, but as life stuff happened, I fell off the wagon and gave up. And by “life stuff” I don’t mean anything major; just the normal ups and downs of life with kids and work and responsibilities.

I think the best kind of writing challenge for me is to have a “writing time” and sit down at that time every day. Even if I don’t get very many words written, there’s something about the regularity of the appointment that works. All I have to do to win the challenge is sit down at my desk at the appointed time.

Maybe I can modify/combine the writing time challenge with the time-amount challenge. Once per day — any time that presents itself during my hectic day — I sit down at my desk with my WIP open and try to write for fifteen minutes. Set the timer, sit for fifteen. If writing happens, great. If no writing happens, I still meet the challenge for that day.

It’s worth a shot.

Reading Challenge (Day 2)

August 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

This one was rockier than I expected. Two hours is a long time, yo! I made it — eventually — by reading while the kids and husband watched our Family Movie Night movie (The Aristocats, in case any are wondering).

Finished Labyrinth, and while the last chapter made me a little wistful, as Sarah returns home, puts away some of the childish things she was clinging to, and sees Ludo, Sir Didymus, and Hoggle in the mirror, I still stand by what I said earlier: The book needed to be less faithful to the movie. Yes, I know this is not the point at all of doing a movie tie-in novelization, but still. The movie’s magic is the movie’s magic; the book didn’t quite get there for me. I’m glad I read it, though, if for no other reason than it makes me want to re-watch the film and go play the role-playing game.

Now I need to finish the reading assignment for my book club before Tuesday night. That should give me good motivation to read as much as I can during work breaks.

Reading Challenge (Day 1)

August 6, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I managed it. Read books for two hours today. Finished one book (A Writer Prepares by Lawrence Block), and continued another (the novelization of the movie Labyrinth).

Even though I love the movie, the novelization is slow going. I guess there’s a reason critics complained about the film’s plot. It is rather episodic, and while it works perfectly well in the movie — where we get to experience all the visual wonder of Jim Henson’s creatures and puppetry — it works less well on the page where the wonderful imagery is somewhat lost. It’s not that the author doesn’t describe things almost exactly as they appear in the film, but that kind of description doesn’t capture the magic of the visual effects. The book needed to be much less a rendering of the movie into words and much more an attempt to capture the tone and spirit of the movie (but perhaps with slightly different characterization, imagery, and plot). Sarah is also much less engaging on the page than she is in the movie. Credit to Jennifer Connelly for making that character somewhat interesting and relatable because the book version is not. This just goes to show (again) that books and movies are two different media and what works in one medium doesn’t always work in another.

Also read some Dungeons and Dragons source books and my book club book, Pachinko. Might even sneak in some reading of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers comics later tonight.

All in all, the first day was a success. But it was also Saturday. Tomorrow should be another easier day to get some reading done, but Monday and the rest of the work week will be the real test. Can I manage two hours of book reading each day while also freelancing? I kinda thought my lunch breaks and morning coffee and such would provide me with plenty of time (or hour or more), but it turns out, I don’t actually have that much time in those moments. Morning coffee is interrupted by kids and household duties; lunch is probably 30 minutes max. I had to sneak time for myself this Saturday to get my two hours. Not sure how easy this will be starting Monday.

But man, does it feel good to read books and not be scrolling the endless wasteland of the internet.

Reading Challenge (Day Zero)

August 5, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I know I need to be reading more books. Lately, the siren song of social media (mostly Reddit, some Twitter alas) has called me away from my books.

This is bad.

When I get a spare moment or two, or when lunch rolls around, I instinctively jump for my ipad and start scrolling through whatever feed is there, or whatever news site is my go-to (nytimes.com or freep.com or NPR), and my brain just kinda turns off and I surf through the headlines. It’s all very useless (except for those times when I find out there’s been a disastrous chemical spill into my local river…).

But that’s just it. There are a few times where scrolling through headlines has been good, where I’ve found important, relevant news and become more informed (like that horrendous and criminal chemical spill disaster). These times are few and far between, of course, but they are the drug that keeps me coming back. I want to stay informed, I want to keep abreast of the news of the day, and unfortunately, these sites give me what I want.

What I don’t want is to get stuck in an endless feed that sucks up all my reading time. Yes, I’ve added that time limit thing to my ipad so it kicks me off the news/social media sites, but of course, just like Frog and Toad and the cookies: I can click the “ignore” button and get back to scrolling. I don’t really want to throw my ipad away (or my phone, or my computer). Willpower doesn’t seem to be enough.

But I want to read more books.

Maybe if I make a challenge for myself to read a certain number of books, I’ll read more. Or better yet, to read a certain number of hours per day.

Maybe I start the old Austin Kleon 30-Day Challenge.

“Everyday I will read books for two hours… After 30 days I get…”

Not sure I want a pony, and I have taco dinners a lot, so they’re not that special. My life WILL be back if I can start reading a book two hours everyday. So that leaves the fill-in-the-blank option. Not sure what I could give myself for succeeding at this challenge. It needs to be something sufficiently enticing that I can overcome the pull of Reddit, etc.

Maybe if I can read books for two hours everyday for thirty days, I’ll give myself permission to buy a new LP or something equally anti-utilitarian but awesome (like a new book!).

It’s worth a try, I guess.

Zesty

August 4, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Have been reading Lawrence Block’s A Writer Prepares and loving it so far. It’s about his earliest days as a writer in New York in the 1950s, writing a bunch of stuff under pseudonyms. What I love the most — besides Block’s very funny conversational style — is the way he describes his writing process and the sheer energy he brought to his work at the time. It’s inspirational to me. I realize that I very much want to be a pulp-style writer who writes quickly and with gusto. I’m reminded of Bradbury’s working habits too, his furious energy and joy. Bradbury calls it “zest” in Zen in the Art of Writing.

The question I keep coming back to is this: How do I write with more zest? How do I sit down in the morning and by the afternoon have an entire short story written? How do I write 4,000 words per day (or more) like Block and Bradbury and the rest of these pulpsters?

Of course, the simplest answer is, “Sit down for four hours and write four thousand words.” But I don’t have four hours, not really, most days. I could probably piece together that time if I took every spare minute I wasn’t working as an editor or taking care of my kids or my home, but most of my free hours are after the kids are in bed — when I am a living zombie and my brain can’t string more than three words together — or in drips and drabs throughout the day (also, a girl has got to eat sometime).

Unfortunately for me, my brain can’t sit down for only five minutes and start writing fiction. I need a bit more time to gather myself, to clear my head, to reenter my manuscript (this last one is the most important… I need at least five minutes to reread what I wrote previously before I can get back into the story). Maybe this is my fatal flaw, I don’t know. But my brain just doesn’t work that quickly.

So if I have, let’s say, ten minutes free time (this is the average length of time between the fights my kids have over toys or whatever). I sit down at the computer, reread what I wrote. That’s five minutes of the ten. Then I start writing for five minutes. Cool, I get about fifty words written, one hundred if I’m lucky. But then I’m called away by my kids or a household chore. I might not have another ten minutes again for the rest of the day. Having little kids means not having a set time when I can sit down to write. Little kids means a life of flux.

It’s not a great plan for finishing a short story in one day (unless it’s super-duper flash fiction). And it’s not a great plan for writing a novel at pulp speed. Sure, I can write one hundred words a day and eventually finish something. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Maybe that’s what I have to do. I have done that before.

But I long for the Lawrence Block/Ray Bradbury life of writing entire stories in one day, of writing at a furious speed.

I can try to get up early, before the kids wake up. But due to several issues (one of which is that I’d like to spend time with my husband in the evening before bed, so I can’t go to bed before 10:30/11:00 p.m. if I want to see him and talk to him; my kids have a rather late bedtime of 9:00 p.m.), I can’t get up too early. 6:30 a.m. is probably my earliest wake up time. So from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., if I can peel myself off the bed sheets, I can write without distraction. Not exactly four hours, but it’s something.

In fact, I did that today. Got up at 6:45ish and headed down to the computer by 7:15. Did I work on my manuscript? Yes.

I wrote one sentence. One.

My brain just wasn’t functioning. I didn’t have the zest.

How can I get the zest? How can I cultivate it? This is why I can’t seem to be a Block/Bradbury-style pulpster writer. I had thirty minutes to write fiction, and I could only manage one sentence. My brain is pretty useless in the morning, apparently. It sucks that my ideal writing time is neither early in the morning nor later at night, but right smack dab in the middle of the day when I need to take care of my kids and get my freelance work done.

But what this morning’s one-sentence affair shows is that time isn’t really the issue. Yes, I was tired this morning, and yes, I couldn’t manage more than a sentence. But what really stops me from writing swiftly and with wild abandon like Block and Bradbury is fear. I can’t be zesty and write with gusto if I’m afraid. That’s the real problem. Fear.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to let go of the fear. Should be easy, right? (This is sarcasm.)

What am I afraid of? Fear of writing something bad, which is almost always the fear for writers. Bad can come in different flavors: using the wrong words, writing a stupid idea, sounding like a fool. Bad can mean writing something totally derivative and unoriginal. Bad can mean boring (the worst crime of all). Bad can mean incoherence or a canyon of plot holes or one-dimensional characters. That’s the fear. Fear that I’ll write something bad and be judged for it. And that judgment can come from others or it can come from myself. I can hate it or others can hate it, but either way, I’m afraid to be judged.

This is where the process mindset stuff comes in. Focus on process not product. Who cares if the finished product is terrible, what matters is the process. Enjoy the process!

I keep telling myself this. Because I do enjoy the process. I love the process. I love thinking up stories and images and characters and writing down what’s in my head. I can’t think of anything I love more (except maybe reading books, but reading books and writing books are like two sides of the same coin).

But my process, despite my best efforts, is a slow process. I need time to get back into my story. I need time to think and ponder and daydream and let stuff simmer, and maybe all of that is just my way of dealing with my fear, but I don’t think it is. I think that’s just how my brain works. Or not. I don’t know.

I do know that it really helps to be thinking about my story all day long, to be listening to music, to be daydreaming while washing dishes or making lunches. What gets me stuck is when I let my story drift into the background and all the other anxieties and responsibilities of the day take over. I can’t be zesty on command, when my butt hits the chair for ten minutes a day. I need to stay zesty all day long. I need to make the whole day part of my process, even as I’m doing other stuff, all the survival stuff like feeding my kids and making money from my day job. I still need to keep my story in mind, still need to let my imagination wander.

I want to restart my morning writing habit, my 6:30-7:30 butt-in-chair time, but in order to write more than one sentence, I need to be thinking about my story all day long. If I’m caught up in my story — in the process of making stuff up — then hopefully I won’t have time for fear. If I’m having fun all day using my imagination, then the anxieties about judgment can’t creep in. Zesty is a state of mind, but it’s also a habit of being. I need to stay zesty all day by living in my imagination all day. Then, when 6:30 a.m. rolls around — or those ten minutes of free time — my brain will be ready.

That’s the theory, anyway.

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