Last week, I wrote about creating structures to help me read more. I left out a major detail in this letter: 70% of my writing process is reading, and so to meet my writing goals, I need to create reading goals.
I’ve read an extra two hours for every hour I’m writing.
At the heart of it is an eagerness to consume: to know more than I do and magnificently widen the scope of the world I’m creating. This has significantly impacted my writing project: I like what I’m writing. You probably know how self-glorifying this is. What’s a story if it hasn’t been edited? Raw and ugly. Exactly what my writing project is. But reading has helped me find the beauty in the ugly. I like what I see and that I can see it.
Here are a few other reading-related exercises I’m practising:
Making notes as I read: to think through what the writer is doing
Writing about what I read: to remember
Discussing what I read: to find more perspectives; things I didn’t see the first time
Applying what I read: to make me better
The best of January
At the end of every month, I’ll highlight superlatives—the best of the best from the month.
The best novel I read
The best short story I read
The best nonfiction I read
Occasionally, I’ll share movies, shows, articles, and more.
I’ll use ‘best’ very loosely for the kind of things I’m curating. Sometimes, it’ll mean stories that left a lasting impression on me. Other times, it’s a story I learned a lot from. Either way, I guarantee you’ll find this shortlist helpful. 🌸
Fiction immerses you in reality, sometimes more than reality itself
And that’s perhaps because of the range and depth of realities you can experience in the form.
Rarely — like once in a yellow moon — I wonder if I’m not wasting my time with this fiction business. And so often, great stories remind me of the power of fiction. I started the year rounding up a novel I started in December: ‘The Vanishing Half’, a tale of two sisters — twins — who have to navigate life with the heavy consciousness of their race. One of them decides to pass as white. She marries, has a child, and continues in this deception.
Before ‘The Passing’ — the movie and novel — I had no idea ‘passing’ was an actual thing.
Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived as a member of another.
But it adds up. People bleach their skins to be considered more appealing for jobs and other opportunities. Bringing it closer to home, in the age of Snapchat and Instagram, we use filters to slightly alter our appearance. To become mainstream beautiful? I’m searching for the right word.
I’m not saying that the twin sister shouldn’t live with whatever consequences await her in fiction hell for deceiving her husband, child, colleagues and neighbours about her race.
The novel, however, reminded me of what it means to bend in circumstances you can’t control and how discrimination will always be a menace. You won’t always get all of these different flavours to a story in real life.
Speculative fiction brings clarity to the problems with the world and may sometimes offer solutions
More than creating a different and fancy place where we (readers and viewers) can temporarily escape, speculative fiction brings our attention to the problems.
This month, I read two dashing speculative fiction titles ‘The Visit’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and ‘Graceful Burdens’ by Roxanne Gay.
The Visit features a world not entirely different from ours. The matriarchy doesn’t feel at all jarring—women are the heads, not the neck: a female president, a wife as the official and acknowledged breadwinners, etc.
I like speculative fiction like this.
What I enjoyed most, though, was this act of flipping the coin and seeing: what if men were considered the weaker sex? Subjugated? Powerless? Chimamanda explores this both from a domestic and a political level, and it made me realise how flawed this world we are living in is.
In Graceful Burdens, Roxane Gay doesn’t flip the script. She considered multiple angles of an ongoing problem: women’s reproductive rights. She stretches reality. Here’s what you’ll find in the world of Graceful Burdens:
There are requirements for reproduction, and if you don’t meet them, you can’t have children (applies only to women). You’re unfit, a disgrace.
These unfit mothers may borrow babies from a baby library. Still, you’re a disgrace.
Then there are women whose only purpose is to mate with screened men to raise genetically optimal children. How limiting.
The common thread for these different categories of women is that they’ll have to fight: to be enough and to be free. And isn’t it just like being a woman in 2022?
Inspire yourself with self-improvement books
I already wrote about Atomic Habits by James Clear, my ideal best of January in nonfiction.
I also read a book on writing by Bryan A. Garner: HBR’s Guide to Business Writing which teaches business people how to write and organise their writing.
Here are a few randomly selected tips:
The best place to start is ‘why’. Why am I writing this? What problem do you want to solve, or what goal do you want to achieve with the email, concept note, etc. that you’re writing.
Understand your reader (and psychology in general) because communication is a two-way exercise.
Push for clarity: keep your language simple, vary the length and structure of your sentences, show, don’t tell.
My favourite advice? Stop insisting that you can’t write. Anyone can write. All it takes is some practice. And to practice, you need to start.
I’m feeling rather pleased that I made it to the end of the month with one newsletter every Thursday.
Have a great weekend. ❤️
Thanks to Blessing for helping with the research and Tobi for proofreading.