Skip to main content

Time in a Book

It’s unfair, really.  I live in a world with so many good books but in a society that gives me no time to read.  Of course I can read on the bus, but is that quality time with my literary children?  Hardly.

A number of websites have recently taken to suggesting books you should’ve read but may never have heard of.  That’s the way the publishing industry works these days—those that are bound to become classics will not be published by the Big Five.  You’ll need to ferret them out from smaller houses.  Then try to find some time.

Civilization, which gave us the writer, is also what is taking her away.  More and more time is demanded by work.  They get away with it because they can.  When’s the last time I really took a lunch break?  Sat on a park bench and read?

I found a list, on GQ of all places, citing forgotten books that should be read.  Despite it being GQ, I don’t doubt it for one second.  Here are authors who, like me, are crying out to be heard.  At least they got published.

Books, perhaps, don’t work as an industry.  They don’t compete well in a world of electronic titillation.  We’d rather watch that video on YouTube over and over again.  And forget about sweeping the floors, let alone reading a book.

Half-way through GQ’s list, I scrolled back to the beginning and started over with a pen and paper.  I’m not sure when I’ll find the time to read all these books, but I feel for the forgotten author.  Or the lost book.

Over the past several weekends—the only time I actually have to send things to publishers—I’ve been caught up with the things weekday life compels me to ignore.  That leaking faucet, those unpaid bills, the car has to go to the garage.  When’s the last time I balanced the hemorrhaging bank book?  How am I going to find time to read?


Squeezing it into the untrammeled minutes hardly seems fair. I will, however, do just that.  To do any less would be to live like a savage in a room of pâté and foie gras.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Working Through It

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Patterns

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creative Righting

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more