A shelf of unfinished letters
A good library card is the cheapest luxury there is. The details matter less than the routine of paying attention.
Notes along the way
Small, repeatable steps beat big plans nearly every time. Here is what changed, and what stayed exactly the same. Every reading list says as much about the reader as the books. I read it once in a hurry and once bit by bit, and they were different books. What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed.
What did not work
Between rereading and browsing second-hand shops, the second one taught me more. Short books are not lesser books; frequently they are the opposite. The shift showed up bit by bit, then all at once.
Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. The trick, if there is one, is to leave enough room for slip-ups. Margins are where reading turns into thinking. I wrote most of this on a hushed Friday morning.
I keep coming back to novels, mostly because it rewards persistence. Some of this will be obvious; some of it took me years. Translations are a conversation between two writers and a reader. I keep a short list of things to try next; reading aloud is near the top. Between rereading and annotating, the second one taught me more.
Looking back, the forgotten approach was the right call.
What I would do differently
If something here is unclear, that is on me, not you. The best passages are the ones I copied out by hand. I abandoned it halfway and came back a year later, glad I did. Between browsing second-hand shops and annotating, the second one taught me more. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version.
In May the light changes, and so does the work. Looking back, the unfinished approach was the right call. Most problems with short stories turn out to be problems with time. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about short stories.
Getting started
For a long time I treated long books as an afterthought. I tested the well-worn version first. It did not last. Most problems with diaries turn out to be problems with time. In February the light changes, and so does the work.
A friend once described second-hand books as hushed work, and the phrase stuck. I keep coming back to long books, mostly because it rewards persistence. Most problems with poetry turn out to be problems with time. The result is not perfect, but it is truthful.
- Write down what you change
- Stop before you are tired
- Ask someone at a second-hand bookshop