Some thoughts on reading and writing …

1. Finding time to read

For me it’s: Whenever I can + Sunday mornings.

Sundays, I get up early, make a pot of coffee, sit down with a stack of books, and read down the pile for a couple of hours.

I’ve come to think it’s about the stillness as much as the books themselves. 

How about you? When do you read?

The current pile.

2. Road trips

Not long ago I drove to a bookstore and back.

It was three hours each way.

I listened to an entire audiobook on the trip.

The mecca.

3. Distractions

I’m as distractible as anyone. (People close to me would say, “Dude, you’re way MORE distractible.”)

I went down a rabbit hole the other day for an hour watching YouTube videos of flash floods in Southern Utah. 

The best strategy I’ve found for NOT getting distracted is to make distraction inconvenient (e.g.: put the phone in the other room) or impossible (e.g.: install a website blocker). 

4. Productivity

The best strategy I’ve found for being productive is to get up early and start writing before I look at my phone or the web or anything else. 

The other best strategy I’ve found for being productive is to redefine what “productive” means. 

Mary Oliver helps.

My productivity guru.

Her  “Devotions” is my daily reader this year. This is from her poem “Roses, Late Summer”:
 

I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

Being “productive” has come to mean something more like “paying attention.” At least a little while each day.

5. I get excited about long plane rides

All that time to read! 

6. This is the best movie scene ever

Belle and Beast having a perfect date.

7. Goals

My writing goals are:

1. Write one page in a Moleskine journal every day
2. Write 10 hours toward a story every week.

You can write a lot that way if you just keep going and don’t worry about quality until later. 

8. Books are better than (nearly) everything else

On Sunday, I finished the second book in Neal Shusterman’s “Scythe” trilogy (a delicious, early YA dystopian series).

I dreamed about it all night.

Part of me is still 8 years old.

9. The theme

Taking a page from Steven Pressfield, I like to write the theme of any in-progress story on a Post-it and stick it on my laptop. For our current story, “Scar and the Wolf,” the theme is: Growing up rewards resilience.

It helps remind me that the book is more than Red Riding Hood reimagined as a zombie. 

Though it is that, too. 

Which the 8-year-old in me loves.

Happy reading.

Jeff, Bob, and Zoe …
… who believe that reading with kids can change the world for the better

“Scar and the Wolf”: Chapters 2-3

Illustration by Madeline Barber.
 

“It should be noted that the zombies of Plainfield, like all zombies, ate brains. They ate a lot of other foods, too, but they loved brains above all else. They had an infinite number of ways to prepare them and would eat them every chance they got.

If you’re concerned about where the brains came from, don’t be. Plainfield’s zombies ate only brains from animals that had lived long happy lives and then died in their sleep of natural causes.

Which, when you think about it, is rather civilized.”

 

Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Happy Unearthday, Scarlet
• Chapter 2 (The Haggis Project) and 3 (The Cloak Smelled Like Squirrel Pee)

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