It seems I am in A Phase. Over the weekend I waved a cheerful goodbye to two unfinished novels, then dropped them off my nightstand. The week before that, I got twenty-three pages into another before dumping it onto my library donations pile without so much as an apology. This morning I broke up with a fourth, a best-seller with reviews that swore there was no way I would not love this book. After forty-eight pages I gave up and searched my pile of unread books for yet another victim.
Most of the time I go through books the way I would eat chocolates if my hips allowed it. I finish one and delve immediately into the next, savoring the characters, the plot, the clever turns of phrase. Each time I exercise or clean house or push a squeaky-wheeled cart up and down the grocery store aisles, I plug into an audio book, letting stories wash over me. When hubs and I take our canvas chairs to a nearby overlook to watch the sun set over the desert, we often tote along something to read aloud to one another.
But I cannot, no matter how much I try, completely lose myself in reading while I am in the middle of revisions. Once I spend hours analyzing each sentence of my own work, the picky part of my brain is turned on. From then on, every bit of writing I encounter, whether it is mine or someone else’s, is routed through my editing filter.
That is happening now. The obligatory six weeks have passed between the draft I wrote this summer and the edits required to start submitting it. Now, after several days spent performing major surgery on my novel at every opportunity, my brain has once again turned into an Equal Opportunity Editor, and I’ve gone from eager-to-read to impossible-to-please. The quality of my reading does not matter. If I am spending hours each day examining my own writing, then by habit I will analyze every other sentence to waltz my way as well. Only blogs, it seems, are exempt, perhaps because the style is so different.
My inability to switch off the ruthless reviser inside me is exhausting and inevitable, and totally unfair to the author of whatever pleasure reading I attempt. Worse, my inability to relax with a good book feels unnatural and somehow very wrong. Reading, after all, is what led me into writing, and now writing is preventing me from enjoying reading.
I’ve gone through this before, and I know that it will end. Within days of finishing edits, I will be able to see an adverb without feeling the impulse to ink it out. I will once again have the patience to read backstory — it is, after all, sometimes necessary. I will not automatically pause after I read each line of dialogue, wondering if it should be reworded to make it sound more authentic. I will, in short, be able to lose myself in a book again, which is the best possible incentive for finishing revisions. I’m already saving several books I know I will love for after edits, as a reward.
The second best incentive, for the record, is getting to begin a new story. My next book has already begun to evolve in my mind, and I cannot think of it without a little zing of excitement. But first, revisions.
I completely know what you mean. I can’t turn it off. I proofread menus, for goodness sake. It makes me a wonderful lunch date, let me tell you. 😉
Ohmigosh, I can’t tell you how much I hate this! It sounds so pretentious to say it, but about the only authors I’ve been able to read lately are John Irving and Joseph Finder. I just saw the latest Marcus Sakey, and I’m itching to get my hands on that one.
I’ve had big trouble reading this year.
Good luck with your revisions so that you can enjoy reading again.
Ack! Join the club. My reading has dwindled to dismal over the past few months because I go straight from one WIP to another. There’s hardly any time for reading and if there is, I have the toughest time getting through it.
Good luck with those revisions. 😉
Carrie, I do that, too! It’s ridiculous.
Spyscribbler, I’ve been able to manage a few books, but it’s sporadic, and even those I haven’t gotten into the way I would have otherwise. I hope you’re able to read with pleasure soon!
Thanks, Dru. Here’s hoping. 😉
Oh, Marcia, I totally feel your pain! I hope that you’re able to break out of it and read, even if you’re writing or revising.
Thank goodness for this blog. Now I don’t feel so alone – editing goes hand in hand with writing and it will never ever go away. Here I thought I was just lazy and that’s why so many reads were left unfinished.
I think the answer is to read something outside your genre – better yet, read non-fiction or a collection of essays. I’m in the thralls of “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” by David Sedaris. What’s nice is that I can read one essay, put the book down for a week, pick it back up and read another and not have to remember where I left off. (Kick-ass book by the way.)
Other than that, there’s just no way to turn off the editor in us.
Caryn,
this really brings home the fact that as authors, we only have a few pages to hook a reader, so to make those first pages fabulous 🙂
Think of it this way–better to have the Editor from Hell and not be able to read other books for a while than to not have it and have your own book suffer as a result.
And yeah, it happens with movies and tv shows, too. I think of them as continual craft lessons.
I HATE REVISIONS! I really do. I know most people love them, but I can’t handle them.
Though, on the flip side, I don’t like to edit other people’s work, either. I mean, I notice things I’d change sometimes, but usually I just engross myself in the story. When I can’t read is usually when I’m in the throes of writing, because I can’t stop thinking about my own work. Let’s just say that I’ve been reading a lot lately… 🙁
Are you at the point where you hate the book yet? Don’t you wish it would just be DONE already so you can start the next one?! LOL… Keep up the ruthless, girl. The story will be all the better for it!
Audiobooks at the grocery store! What a brilliant idea!