A slow art

SICHA: I meet a lot of people in their twenties, and they’re concerned. They want to get published, and I think, “Well, hopefully you’re going to live a little while. Don’t walk in front of any trucks.”

LE GUIN: I don’t think most people write very good narrative prose until they’re in their later twenties. Writing is a slow art. Music can be such a fast and early art. A good musician can be just terrific at 16. But how many writers are there … I mean, even Keats is still blundering around at 16. By his early twenties, of course, he’s writing immortal poetry, but there aren’t a lot of Keatses, really. There’s where you get “gift” to a degree that it’s kind of like a miracle. You can’t use the Keatses to talk about writing as a craft or an art or a practice or a profession. The geniuses—they’re off there, doing their lovely thing.

SICHA: They mess up the scale for the rest of us.

LE GUIN: That’s okay. You just have to realize you’re not going to get there, but so what? You can still do beautiful work.

SICHA: There’s room for plenty of people.

— Choire Sicha interviewed Ursula K. Le Guin

The long game is no fun. I want instant gratification!!

I don’t like to call things ‘resolutions’ because of connotations around the word (so tightly paired with inevitable failure) but obviously that’s the right word for: This is the year I get over my weird reluctance to pursue the sort of traditional avenues of improving writing. It’s a talent, but it’s a craft. There’s a certain amount you can learn from doing the thing, and there’s some you can learn from talking to others who are doing the thing. But I guess I admit that there’s gotta be more to learn from the right ‘traditional’ sources (i.e., ones that aren’t trying to nudge me into writing rainwater-in-an-ashtray literary fiction. I’m fine with a certain amount of that, but for god’s sake, give me magic too).

So I’ve got this list of books to read. Some of ’em will be disappointing; some’ll be great, I hope. We’ll see what else might happen.

On expanding my horizons

In 2015, besides horror, I tried to pick a few other areas where my reading has been… lacking. Most obviously, those genres were poetry and romance. Still are. Probably forever — I don’t have a passion for either, but I will continue to look for small corners to enjoy.

Poetry

This is sad. I am not impressed with myself. I thought to myself, you know what I don’t do now that I’m not in school? Read poetry. I should read poetry! And then, what did I do last year?

Read one book of poetry.

RaptureRapture by Carol Ann Duffy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don’t know how to rate poetry. I don’t know how to review it. I barely know how to read it, except to take each word, each line, as it comes. I liked some of the poems in this collection, and a good lot of the lines and phrases. That’s all I can say.

View all my reviews

It was fine! I enjoyed some of the poems a lot! I chose it by a very scientific method: I saw in in the basement at Harvard Bookstore and liked the cover, and also had heard of Carol Anne Duffy before in my life. Verrrrry scientific. So I guess what I’m saying is someone better at poetry than me should put me through a quiz and then hand me some small books of poetry to read this year. Volunteer applications are open.

Romance

Hhhokay. Okay! I had a few long Twitter conversations with romance-reading friends, and always read Mindy Hung’s writing about romance at The Toast, and listened carefully to the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode on romance while taking notes, so I barreled into this genre armed with knowledge and recommendations. I’m certain that helped!

On the other hand, of the 4 romance books I logged on Goodreads, one was probably my Worst Book Of The Year, and another was one of my few Official DNF books. Oh, there’s another I haven’t even logged in Goodreads, but I haven’t given up on reading it. However, the fact that it’s been 6 months of trying is probably not the best sign!

So what did I like? Jeannie Lin. I liked Jeannie Lin’s historicals. I read two of them and they were both really fun, and I’m almost certainly going to read more of the Gunpowder Alchemy series.

Oh! And I read a sample of A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev, and I look forward to reading it sometime soon.

Here’s the Goodreads shelf with all of them. Sorry, book I hated. Sorry, book I gave up on.

Okay, now you tell me where I went wrong, or give me other recommendations in these genres! Do it! I really want you to.