I published two new novels in 2017, and re-released an old novel with a new cover. I launched a website for my writing, and I spent some money on advertising. I built an e-mail list of readers to whom I can directly advertise when my next book is published.Oh, and let’s not forget the 64 posts that have appeared on this blog. (That’s a disappointing number. I would have guessed I wrote at least 100 posts. Although, in case you hadn’t noticed, I have largely abandon this blog over the past couple of months.)So I did a lot of writing in 2017, but I have a confession to make: I didn’t read a single book in 2017. That’s indefensible.For my birthday in April my kids bought me a book that I wanted — Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman. As you can probably guess it’s a biography of David Letterman. I dove right into it and read the first fifteen pages. Then the next day I read a few more. The next day I read a few more.And then I stopped.Sometime in November I thought, “I haven’t read a book this year. I better get on it.” I picked up the Letterman book again, realized that I had no idea on what page I had left off (I don’t use bookmarks. Maybe that’s an idea for a future post!), and decided to just start over.I read forty or fifty pages this time—again, I’m not sure where I left off—but I didn’t finish it. Days passed, weeks passed, and then we yelled Happy New Year last night and thus ended my first bookless year in decades.To be clear, I’m talking about reading a book by myself, for my own pleasure. Books that I’ve read aloud to my kids don’t count, even though I enjoy them, too. It also doesn’t count reading my own books. I consider that part of writing, not reading. Although it is interesting to me how quickly I forget what I write, so sometimes reading a book that I wrote keeps me on the edge of my seat, even though I wrote it!One of my favorite websites is Goodreads, which is all about books. They have a great feature where users can keep track of the books they’ve read, and write reviews of them. I’ve tracked almost every book I’ve read (in looking at the list now, I see that I’ve forgotten a couple over the past two years), along with ratings and reviews of all of them, going back to 2008.But a quick review of that list shows that the last book I finished reading was Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road, by William Least Heat-Moon. And that was in March 2016. Which means I’m going on almost two years without reading a book!And if we go back even further, we find that I’ve only finished one other book — Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo—since July 2014.That’s more than three years!In his book On Writing, Stephen King says, “If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.” I’ve always agreed with this sentiment, so it alarms me that I’ve set out to take a real shot at a writing career while abandoning the other side of the equation.This isn’t a New Year’s Resolution post. I’m not going to resolve to read more books in 2018, or set a goal of 20 books or anything. Instead, I’m just going to remember Stephen King’s words.I’m not one of those people who can remember particular lines from books years after I’ve read them. I always remember whether I liked a book, or the basic plot points, but quotes elude me. So the fact that I remember that Stephen King quote 17 years after I read it says something about its importance to me, even on a subconscious level.I plan to do a lot of writing in 2018, and since Stephen King knows a thing or two about writing, I’ll defer to his expertise on the subject. It’s time to get to work.Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
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