Now I’m going to consciously focus on getting in more novels, instead of books’ worth of shorts. I saw a good blog post about this from Roni Loren, who is going for five pages a day. Of course it’s a trick—she’ll get herself hooked and read more than that! See? I don’t think that five-page trick is going to work so well on me, though. Not that I’m too clever for it, not at all. It’s just that my brain can be weirdly literal. Five pages means FIVE PAGES WE’RE STOPPING AFTER FIVE.
So my goal is twenty pages—something achievable, yet I could still make progress. And strangely, I find my brain is more flexible about that number. Why? I don’t know, by twenty pages it just gives up or something. Anyway, I think I can make that work.
The best tip for me in Roni’s post is the bit about trying to decide what to read next and trying out the first five pages of a couple of books. I think this will help me get rid of the “what I should read” monster that takes some of the fun out of reading.
And that’s a pretty important part of all this—have fun with it. Find what works for you, then keep doing that.
Though there’s a lot to be said for short fiction, too.