Novel-in-progress Taint is at 24,087 words as of this morning. I've been slowed down these past few days (that little matter of being carted to the hospital in an ambulance last Sunday didn't help, either). But I seem to be picking up speed again.
I was talking with some other writers recently about reading fiction for pleasure. I used to be someone who haunted bookstores, who always had a book on her, who read while walking (not while crossing the street, though. That seems to make drivers nervous). But when writing and teaching writing became my career, other reading shoved my pleasure reading out of the way. Reading and critiquing student work, for instance. Reading the books of colleagues hoping for blurbs (I mostly don't do that one any more). Books and manuscripts for grants and literary award juries. Reading contracts (though it's pretty nice to have contracts that need to be read). Plus, mental exhaustion was setting in. I have a fatigue disorder, so at the best of times, I have to husband my energy carefully in order to have enough for attending to the things I have to do. Add undiagnosed anaemia to that, and the sheer amount of mental attention I need to devote in order to make a living; most days I start work almost the minute I wake up, and work to exhaustion by the end of the day. I barely notice weekends and holidays any longer. When I'm not writing, I'm thinking or talking about writing. Mind you, it's work that involves creating imaginary worlds for fun and pay, so don't feel too sorry for me. Nevertheless, it is work. Pretty soon something happened to me that I never would have thought possible; I all but lost my appetite for leisure reading. In the past few years, I was unable to maintain the mental energy to read even a single line of prose just for the fun of it. But I have a much better handle on the anaemia now, and wonder of wonders; a brain that's getting enough oxygen just works better! The past few years of illness have wreaked financial havoc on my life and starved me creatively, so now that I'm feeling a lot better and can write and work again, I'm pretty focused on catching up on overdue contracts, coming back into my creative self, and on getting back into a groove of work that will enable me to put food on my table more regularly. So even though my brain is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again, I still hadn't been making the time to do leisure reading. It seemed like a pastime I couldn't afford.
That is, until I heard my fellow writers say that when they stopped reading for pleasure, they stopped being able to write. There was a forehead-slap of a moment; you'd think I'd have been able to figure that one out for myself. So now I've begun to carve out time that's just me and a piece of fiction I picked up on a whim. Reading is becoming tasty again. That's such a relief. It was a core part of my sense of self and I feared I'd lost it for good. Best part is, when I'm reading about a horse's perspective on New York, or how to outfox The Specialist, or the life of a professional elevator whisperer, I can say, "Go away. I'm working."
