Recently I’ve been trying to get myself back into reading more. I fell out of it for a long time because, honestly, when you read for a living, it can really damage your ability to just enjoy a story. I found myself having to fight to stop the analytical part of my brain from constantly saying things like, “There’s a misplaced comma there.” Imagine that in a Gollum voice, if you please. That’s more or less what it’s like.
I’ve been trying to push through Mistborn for months with no success. That’s no reflection on the books, either. Sanderson is a masterful writer, and the story is very engaging. Also, relatively error-free. It was infuriating to be reading excellent prose and have my brain going, “Yeah, but we could be watching Youtube.”
Part of this has been the fact that I’ve been working on tackling my ADHD for the first time in my life. I’ve been taking Adderall and working on figuring out what dose works for me. Right now I’m at the lowest possible, but I suspect I may need to raise it a little now that I’m more used to it. But part of it really is the fact that since reading is such a large part of my job as an editor, it’s made it hard to let go and just enjoy it again.
So what was my solution to that?
Honestly? I’ve started reading smut. I’ve been digging into reading naughty, spicy, steamy books because I’ve never edited one or had to work on one. So my brain doesn’t seem to realize yet that I’m tricking it. I don’t think too hard about the story structure, the punctuation, or the rest. I just enjoy the ride. So it’s been allowing me to just dig back into the fun parts of reading again for a while.
It’s my hope that I’ll be able to enjoy fantasy again because it’s what I grew up on. I love fantasy books. But for now, smut seems to be unlocking the part of my brain that lets me read at all. It’s like literary cheesecake: delicious, rich, and probably not altogether good for me to consume too much. But the goblin brain wants cheesecake, so cheesecake it will get.
Jayce Carter recently gifted me her collected works, which I am neck-deep in and ejoying SO much. Plus I’ve been reading R. A. Steffan, Cherise Sinclair, Lionel Hart, Althea Faust, and Emily Blackwood. If you look up those names and are horrified, remember you did it to yourself. I’m not sorry. I did warn you I was reading smut. And this is smut. I mean that in the most complimentary way, too. The authors are solid writers with good plots in addition to, well… the stuff most of us are reading the books for.
Sometimes when you get stuck, you have to just let go of the idea of reading “proper” things and just eat some cheesecake. And, what do you know, it seems to be working. I’ve read more books in the last six months than I did in the last two or three years put together. It’s been nice to get back into it.
What does this have to do with being an author? I’m not entirely sure. There’s probably some lesson in here about not letting the work steal your joy or what have you. And I’m sure there are lessons in here about how to kickstart yourself when you fall into a rut, but this is more of just a personal analysis of something I’ve been fighting with than anything.
While this blog is still going to be writing advice a lot of the time, I feel like sharing more of my personal life might be more interesting to non-writing folks, so you will probably start seeing that content more from me as time goes on.
