There are times when I’m deeply focused on a particular book and I read it in the morning when I wake up, just before I go to sleep, and in every bit of time I can steal in between. Then there are times like now, when I can’t seem to settle on one book, so I have several very different books going at once and I go back and forth between them depending on my changing mood. A few pages of a political book before bed. An hour listening to a genealogical memoir while I’m driving. An essay during a break from work. It’s a chaotic approach to reading, I’ll grant you, but it gets it done.
Here’s a look at the odd assortment of books and audiobooks I’m reading now:
The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam
This is a perfect follow-up to the genealogical course I took earlier this year. Julie Klam details her experience tracking a set of fascinating sisters that she was distantly related to—only to find out that much of what she was told about them wasn’t accurate. Klam’s story has me itching to try harder to track one of my own distant relatives who was the subject of some amazing (and possibly untrue) stories.
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
I don’t find Lord Peter Wimsey a very fascinating sleuth, but I love the Harriet Vane character that Sayers introduces in this book (and who features in all the subsequent Wimsey stories). But what I’m most interested in is the extremely well-plotted mystery Sayers crafted in this tale.
The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman
The author is also an actress (I only recognize her from her brief appearances in Downton Abbey) and she brings that inside knowledge to this Hollywood mystery. It feels a little draggy and there have been several points where I’m screaming at the main character when she’s ignoring obviously key clues, but it’s a mostly fun read.
Rage by Bob Woodward
Apparently, I can’t let go of my outrage over the Trump years so I’m still re-hashing the horrors with political books like this. This could be termed a masochistic read.
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
I’ve been reading this slowly, essay by essay, for several months. Didion is high on my list of favorite writers, so any collection of hers is something to savor.
Finding Meaning by David Kessler
This is something I’m reading because of a project I’m working on related to memorial gardens. Kessler proposes that there is a sixth stage of grief (meaning) beyond the five (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote about decades ago. The way things are going, we should all be learning how to better handle grief.
What are you reading?

After a year and a half of staying home to write, I’ve started venturing back out to a café to get some writing done. I’m again organizing a once-a-week Shut Up & Write session in Alameda and (mostly) I’m happy to get back to this practice.

But, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that it feels a little like the way I imagine an astronaut might feel when she takes that first space walk. While I eventually got quite comfortable writing in cafés in the pre-pandemic days, it did take me a while to get there and I had to learn a few tricks to make it really workable and productive. Then the pandemic hit, the lockdown began, and I had to re-adjust to writing at home. Now, as I get back to café writing, it once again feels like a foreign environment that I’m not fully prepared to handle.

For one thing, I’ve had to re-assemble my go-bag. In the past, I was so well-prepared for café writing that I kept a backpack or canvas tote ready with all the things I considered essential to get my writing done. It included a paper notebook, a few pens of different types, any notes or  files I needed for my current project, and earphones so I could listen to music and block out ambient noise. All I needed to do was slip my laptop in the bag and I was ready to go.

But over the intervening months, my go-bag was disassembled, and a half-hour before I was supposed to leave for my first Shut Up & Write session, I realized that I had to first remember exactly what it was I needed to bring with me, and then scramble to pull it together.

OK, so go-bag in hand, I’ve been to four SU&W sessions now and I think I’m starting to get the hang of things. We are meeting at a new café, one that has outdoor seating available because in spite of being fully vaccinated, I’m still a bit leery of being indoors as long as the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is an issue. When the weather turns cooler, I’ll have to figure out what to do since the indoor seating in this café is limited. There’s also a lot of street noise at this place and my old earphones are not good enough to block it out, so I just invested in a new pair of noise-canceling headphones that I’ll be test-driving at the café later this week.

I’m also remembering what I’ve been missing this past year and a half: The energy you get from sitting with other writers striving to find the right words. The fun of meeting people and hearing a little about their works in progress. The reminder that writing doesn’t have to be an isolating slog. And the way a really good latte can make the words flow just a little bit easier.

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So, having made some successful pitches to book editors last week, I’m now in the position of having to put the final polish on two book proposals.

It. Is. Not. Fun.

And it makes me think that book proposals really do have a lot in common with marriage proposals. In both cases, you tend to go into it a little starry-eyed, thinking “Wow, if I can just get a ‘yes,’ I’ll be soooooo happy!”

But there are more similarities than that.

Let’s face it, both book proposals and marriage proposals are kind of a hard sell. You have to hit the highlights. You have to know how what you’re offering compares to similar options on the market. You have to promote yourself. And you have to do all of that while feigning confidence that you’ll be able to work through any bumps in the road and still deliver something good—probably on a much smaller budget than what you expected.

Probably the main difference between book proposals and marriage proposals is that there’s no way that a book proposal is going to get an immediate yes or no. Once you send it in, you need to prepare yourself to wait. And wait. And wait. Weeks will go by. Sometimes, months will go by. Earlier this year I got a rejection from a publisher that I had submitted a proposal to so many months earlier that I had completely forgotten I’d sent it to them. That did help take the sting out of it—at least a little bit.

There is one other important difference between book proposals and marriage proposals. With book proposals, it’s a good idea—a really good idea—to have more than one proposal to shop around. I have three proposals for three very different books. I would be happy to do any one of them and I hope eventually that I can write and publish all three books, even if it means self-publishing.

But for now, I’m focusing on making these two proposals as good as I can make them right now and sending them on their way. Because in the end, whether you’re proposing a book or a marriage, all you can do is give it your very best effort.
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And, for god’s sake, remember to spell-check!

This is the time of year when lots of writers are looking ahead to November and what is possibly one of the most masochistic things writers ever do to themselves: National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The objective of course with NaNoWriMo is to write an entire novel of 50,000 words over the course of a month. Although many writers like to jump in on November 1st with nothing more than a bare idea and a blank page, others choose to do prep work. If you're playing by the rules, you can't write any text of the novel prior to November 1st, but you can make notes, do outlines, write character sketches, and any other kinds of pre-writing that may (or may not!) help you hit the ground running and make that 50,000-word goal easier to achieve.

I am still considering whether or not to jump into the NaNoWriMo frenzy this year. I tried several years back and got to about 27,000 words, but I think I could do better now. While I try to make up my mind whether or not to commit, I'm sorting through story ideas that I have in reserve and considering how I would want to prep one. This morning, with this in mind, I came across a blog post from writer Amy Stewart, who has a great idea of how writers can adapt the concept of thumbnail sketches that artists use to create a painting to their own work. Basically, she writes out a brief sketch of what will happen in the next scene or chapter she's going to write, discussing what the scene or chapter needs to accomplish, and what she may know or not know about how it's going to play out. With that done, she's then ready to write the full piece based on the sketch she's written.

I like the adaptability of this idea, because you can go micro (sketching out one brief scene) or macro (sketching out a whole novel, basically a synopsis or treatment) with it. You can sketch out all the scenes or chapters in your book, or just the key ones that are particularly complicated or challenging. That avoids the problem I've run into with outlines--I can never finish them because I never know enough in advance to fill in all the holes. I also like that sketching out scenes in advance is a good way for me to remind myself to make sure I'm injecting enough conflict into the story and not letting things just coast along.

So now for the rest of October, I'll be playing around with written thumbnail sketches while I make up my mind whether to NaNoWriMo or not to NaNoWriMo.

Image credit: Terry Pittman

I confess that the book I'm completely obsessed with is the same book that a lot of Americans are reading right now: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff. It is as compelling and laughable as the best gossip rag, while also being horrifying and, in some places, downright chilling. I'm listening to the Audible audio version, and the narration is kind of amusing because the narrator, Holter Graham, reads the Trump quotes in a little bit of Trump's voice. I may end up finishing it this weekend--that's how hard it is to put this book down.
Beyond Fire and Fury, I have some reading to do related to my research on the SS City of Rio de Janeiro. I just got Crossing the Bar: The Adventures of a San Francisco Bay Bar Pilot by Paul Lobo. I'm hoping it will give me some good insights into the issues of navigating the Golden Gate and the Bar Pilots organization.
Also in the lineup for January is The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn and Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay.
So what are you reading?