Balancing my Reading self and Writing self

Last year, I had a particularly bad reading year. I just lost my reading mojo. I’d get half way through books and lose interest, or I wouldn’t be bothered starting them at all. It was quite upsetting actually. I went from 41 books in 2009, to only 15 last year! 

I could blame the fact that I was overseas for 4 months, or that I was busy with my last semester of uni. But these reasons have never stopped me before.

My reading bug has finally returned to me. I have become unstoppable. Reading in the car (fighting carsickness), reading while walking, reading while my boyfriend gives me puppy dog eyes and begs me to pay him some attention, reading instead of assignments ….

These are my latest purchases. A mixture of journals, YA books, other novels, and my favourite magazine, Frankie.

But I’m struggling to balance reading and writing. 

When I get so into reading, I find that I can’t write. All I want to do is read read read. And I’m so immersed in the world of that novel, that I can’t easily transfer my thoughts to my own writing.

Vice Versa, when I’m writing, I struggle to read. Everything becomes about the world I’m creating, and the people in it. Every spare minute, I’m writing more, researching or editing.

Perhaps that’s why my reading year was so bad last year. I was doing 4 writing subjects at uni and had 12 weeks to write 5 short stories.

Does anyone else struggle to separate their writing and reading self?

My goal is to learn to do both simultaneously. 

I’m going to embrace this time while I’m not working, to get into the habit of waking a bit earlier and writing for at least an hour. And then reading later in the day.

Also, I found this really cute blog, called 3000 books. 

I try to read 50 new books a year, and this blog records my attempts to get a handle on them. Literary grandstanding or the product of an untidy mind? No one knows.

To the numbers: when I started this blog I was 23 years old. The life expectancy for an Australian female is 83 years. 60 reading years left x 50 books = 3000 books.

Why yes, it is very literal. Some might also say it is numerical.

Cute. Gotta pick our reading wisely guys!