Hi, thank you for reading!
First a wee writing update. I have sent off proofs for We Are All Ghosts In The Forest so that’s (hopefully) the editing cycle finished for that book - hurrah!! Edits of All The Birds Will Be Hostile are back with my agent, and I’m taking a wee breather after months of ping-ponging between three different books’ edits. I might try to finish a novella draft I started in November, or if Scotland decides to be sunny, I might just spend time in the greenhouse getting my hands dirty and my mind clear.
This week saw the cover reveal of We Are All Ghosts In The Forest, so I get to shove this gorgeous beastie in front of everyone now - demanding love for the gold bees, the tangled phone, the Orlando cat!! Hugest of respect and gratitude to the artist Jo Walker for creating something so perfect.
Now onto today’s blog/moan/search for affirmation that I’m not alone!
I’m a fairly voracious reader, normally. Not to the degree some people on Goodreads will proclaim, but I probably average around 2-3 books a week, across a fairly eclectic genre range. It’s easier to list the genres I don’t read than the ones I do - actually it’s more about content I don’t read than broad categories. I don’t like excessive gore or endless fight scenes. I don’t like books that glorify the police or capitalist war machines. And I really don’t like fridging of women and children. But if you take out police procedurals, military fic, gory horror and books by rampant mysogynists, that still leaves a pretty broad array of books that I will happily devour.
Only, I’m currently in a SLUMPPP. I am bouncing off more books than I finish. I tend to read to about 10% (20-30% if I’ve liked the author previously), before bailing out and do, if we’re honest, DNF far more books now than when I was young and unaware of the terrible books:remaining lifespan ratio. However I don’t usually DNF quite this many.
I’m jumping around between historic romance, literary existential crisis, contemporary fabulism, second world fantasy, speculative thriller, gothic horror … and ricocheting off all these trusty friends like a trapped bat. It is wildly frustrating, so instead of bouncing off yet another book I figured I’d talk it through with you, lovely creatures.
Have you been where I am? I’ve hit reading slumps before, and had book hangovers that have ruined other books for me for at least … days. But I’ve never struggled quite so hard for so long.
I think the cause of the Terrible Slump is twofold.
I am only just emerging from a solid few months of health crash, during which my cognitive energies and concentration span took a bit of a beating.
I have been switching regularly between several different book edits since early November, and my editorial brain feels rather highly strung and prone to spooking like a horse.
Normally I can cure a slump in one of three ways:
Read popcorn books till I need something more substantial. My favs for this being the commercial end of romantasy, YA fantasy or historic romance. Gimme some Iron Flame or Bridgerton or whathaveyou. They’re fun and ridiculous and require nothing of me at all. When pain and medication do their thing, these books are often all my brain can process so I am unceasingly grateful they exist.
Read some old favourite comfort reads until my brain is all cozy and rested and happy. Old favs are interesting aren’t they? I think they’re less about the content of the book itself and more about the memory they take you to of when and who you were when you first discovered them. My rock solid comfort re-reads are Jane Austen, obviously, and M. M. Kaye, less obviously. Particularly her murder mystery books although also The Shadow Of The Moon. They are so incredibly of their time, but also just wonderful and I adore them.
Bite the monetary bullet and pay full price for an expensive new release from an author I absolutely know I love - a release I’d normally have to wait on tenterhooks for the price to drop. Treat myself (and also guilt myself - if I’ve spent £12 on an ebook I better bloody well read it).
I’ve tried all of these. Even no. 3. And while I enjoyed that book, it didn’t sweep me up and consume me the way I’d hoped, so I ended up at the end still feeling a little listless and unenthused about my tbr.
I think I just need to be gentle with my poor brain, to be honest. It has been unable to really rest during the health disaster due to various bookish timelines, and I guess it’s no surprise something has had to give. I just wish it had chosen, say, my ability to load the dishwasher rather than my ability to concentrate on reading.
Whilst bouncing off yet another perfectly good book, I’ve been reminded of a couple of truths though.
First, that sometimes a DNF really is all about the reader and nothing to do with the book. Sometimes it’s all about the reader on that particular day, and on another day your book might have been read by the exact same person avidly cover to cover.
Second, that reading matters so much as a writer. I feel like only half a writer when I’m not consistently absorbing storytelling as an artform. I don’t think writers have to sit in leather armchairs persuing Camus in gilded hardback, or slouch in a Parisian street cafe smoking and quoting Kafka for that matter. But I do think we have to read widely and read always. And this recent slump has reminded me why.
(yes, I count audiobooks as reading)
I’ve had writers tell me they don’t read in the genre they write in, because they fear cross-contamination. Others have told me they haven’t read fiction in twenty years, or never have time for reading because of fill-in-the-blank OtherStuff. I think, but do not say - why for the love of cheese would you not read the very art form you profess to love enough to want to create? All arguments of market awareness and craft aside, why would you deprive yourself of that joy?
These folk might be outliers, but far more people will admit to only reading the genre they write within, and I’d still argue that doing so trammels your view of your chosen genre. You can indeed know a country very well from within, but travelling outwith it allows you to see its connectedness, its uniqueness, its form and place and function. Reading widely does the same for your understanding of your chosen genre, in my opinion.
The past couple of months of reading fragments of books, re-reading old books, drifting half-awake through undemanding fun … it’s fine, it’s hardly a disaster. But I feel like my creative mind is suffocating a little. My brain is a plant that’s been moved out of the sun and hasn’t been watered quite enough. It’s going a bit yellow and droopy.
So while I will continue to feed my brain popcorn and comfort/treats in the hopes it recovers some more spoons, I look forward to the day I am hungry for new territory. I want to swim in unfamiliar seas, have my horizons warped and widened by other authors, meet monsters that stalk my dreams. I want, most of all, to read books that inspire me to venture more boldly into my own writing.
As I return to staring forlornly at my tbr, please tell me your comfort reads, your sure-fire authors, your recommend-to-everyone books? I need help!
Thank you for reading!
Oh, I have absolutely been there - a couple of years ago, and I’m still coming out of it to a certain extent. The only things that helped start shifting it for me were
1. my equivalent of your popcorn books
2. re-calibrating the TBR books I had to being lovely friendly decor, which could also happen to provide lovely words IF I ever chose to pick them up, rather than them being disapproving neglected friends or lovers,
3. a pomodoro app (I like Forest)
I wish you happy words ahead, in whatever form ❤️