The 10% Rule

I instituted "The 10% Rule" this year as a personal guideline for my reading: If I'm 10% into a book, and I don't like it, let it go.

At the end of last year, I saw that I'd finished and reviewed quite a few books that I didn't like! And most of the time, I had an inkling I wouldn't like these books early on. I just rationalized I should give each book more time to develop... so I'd keep reading... and before I knew it, I'd be halfway into the book. And then I'd feel I'd invested too much time to abandon it. Some friends and family members pointed out, after reading those reviews I'd written on Goodreads, that they don't typically finish ANY books they don't like.

What a novel idea!

So I tested my theory late last year. Could I tell by 10% completion whether I'd like a book or not? And the answer was YES. Thus, The 10% Rule.

I invoked it last week, for The Rosie Effect. Sorry to say that 38 pages in, this sequel had none of the magic of The Rosie Project. And I got to jump on Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari, a book club pick from September that came from the library after that meeting was long over. LOL More on that one later...

The Artist's Way: Tips For Completing The Program

After a long-ago false start with the 12-week "creative recovery program" in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way ("TAW" for short), I have finished. Victory!!!!!! Lots of exclamation points feel appropriate. Having abandoned it once, and now having completed it once, I have three tips in case you're interested in tackling this for the first time and want to complete the 12-week program:

1. Read through Week One before you begin, and first decide how "by the book" you want your experience to be.
   
   Cameron suggests you commit to daily writing via the "morning pages," a weekly artist date, and completion of each week's tasks. (Explanations of all these things are in the book.)
   
   It would have taken me a year just to do all the tasks, and my life has a satisfying number of events that qualify as artist dates. So I decided my main commitment to completing the program was to write those morning pages, 3 per day, every day, for 12 weeks.
    
2. Find support from a peer group.
   
   I was really lucky: As I considered jumping into the book again this spring, I received an email from a local craft studio (in fact, called CRAFT) that they were putting together a group to follow TAW for 12 weeks. About 10 people participated, and the idea was to meet each Monday, discuss progress from the previous week, and maybe complete a little craft together. Summer happened, and only 2 of us ended up finishing the entire program in the 12-week period, although some combination of at least 4 people seemed to meet each week anyway.
   
   Even though everyone had different goals and a different approach to the program, it was really helpful to have cheerleaders and co-commiserators (writing three pages a day is a challenge for most everyone!) offer their support, ideas, and enthusiasm. I enjoyed getting to know these artists, who had different perspectives about creative challenges and solutions. One artist joined the group to get momentum finishing a small but highly emotional piece, and through group discussion, revealed an unrelated huge project that had been sitting, untouched, for six years. She finished her small piece, and after our meetings, she resurrected the huge project and is updating it for publication.
   
   If you scour Craigslist and Meetup.com and don't see a group in your local area that you can join, consider starting your own, in person or virtually. The benefits of a peer group are enormous.
    
3. Plan your weekly progress on your calendar, so you stay on track.
   
   One of the best things I did to help me stay on track was to put an appointment in my calendar (iCal) each Monday with that week's chapter. So if you look at my calendar, on June 15, there is an appointment at 6am called "TAW: Week One." It was my prompt to read the chapter corresponding to Week One and start writing about some of the topics and tasks for the new week. On June 22, my 6am appointment was called "TAW: Week Two" to remind me to stay on track. And so on, for 12 consecutive weeks.
   
   Maybe you'll prefer to start your week on a different day, which is fine. My point is that I never questioned where I was in the program because it was on my calendar.

I wrote a Goodreads review of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, in case you'd like more detail both on what I thought of the book, as well as the overall experience of completing the program. I'll restate the final sentiment of my review here: This is a great book for everyone, not just "creative" folks, because when you think about it, we are all creating a life. Might as well make it one we love.

What I read: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

Nearly ten years ago, on first read, The Creative Habit made a significant impression on me.  Like a meteor, falling through space, burning through the atmosphere, crashing without ceremony into my brain.  A fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants winger by nature, I considered the value of preparation in everything I did, because Twyla said so.  Taking this advice to heart and building a solid preparation process has improved my creative output immeasurably.  

I also stopped categorizing the seemingly disparate interests of my life into "creative" and "non-creative," and I started to think about everything I did (not just sewing clothes and playing music, but also negotiating contracts, writing manuals, and speaking in front of audiences) as a creative endeavor.  This time around, I recognize that seeing myself as an inherently creative individual whose work is all creative has helped me to (ironically?  coincidentally?  accidentally?) create a life that brings fulfillment and joy every day.

It was with fond memories and much reflection that I cracked open The Creative Habit on New Year's Day.  Reading the chapters on preparation, and scratching, and failure were like visiting an old friend.  And, as you'd expect, I found myself captivated by other sections that are more relevant and immediate now than they were 10 years ago.  

Here are two brief lessons that I didn't catch then, that I experienced on my own between the two readings:

• "Overplanning can be as pernicious as not planning at all.  There’s an emotional lie to overplaying; it creates a security blanket that lets you assume you have things under control, that you are further along than you really are, that you’re home free when you haven’t even walked out the door yet."
• "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources."

I specifically chose this book as my first book of the new year because I am starting to obsess over the importance of daily rituals, and I remembered Twyla doing a bang-up job exploring ritual in The Creative Habit:

• "What makes it a ritual is they do it without questioning the need."
• "By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine."

We follow rituals every day by accident -- we didn't design them, just fell into them.  We follow some rituals with alarming consistency and absence of conscious thought.  Isn't that kind of outrageous?  I'm asking myself if the rituals are helpful or hurtful, and if there are steps I can add to them that will make them helpful in some way.  Rituals are a great way to form habits -- are my rituals encouraging the best habits for me right now?

Here's my review of The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp on Goodreads.

10 Best Books I Read in 2014, PART 2

Squarespace is gonna fight me on my numbered list, because this starts with #6 AND WHO AM I TO ARGUE WITH THE SQUARESPACE AI -- so here is the rest of my list with correct numbers and substandard formatting:

6. The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter
It’s kooky, quirky, and hysterically funny.  At least a little bit brilliant.  And happens to be written by an author who lives in Austin.  

7. All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Just because of the topic, this book will not be for everyone.  But maybe it ought to be.  I’m so impressed by how easy it is to know this narrator, Yoli — to really feel immersed in her skin, in her thoughts.  But it was emotionally draining for me to read.

8. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My sole feel-good read of the year, which was actually published in 2011 and has been sitting on my shelf since then, unread until a few months ago.  This was so much fun for me, and has been elevated to top-10 status because it’s the only book that my husband, 11-year-old son, and I all read (separately) and enjoyed.  We were able to talk about it, muse over it, debate plot points in it, and basically create family time discussing it.  Hope there’s a movie coming out of this one.

9. We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Although the prose is a touch melodramatic, and the plot can feel contrived as can any story with a large, multi-character ensemble, there is so much truth embedded in this book.  Plus, the story is set in Las Vegas and much of that is painfully and wonderfully familiar.  I feel like this is similar in some ways to We Are Not Ourselves (and I’m not talking about similarity in the titles), but way better.  Would have liked to have seen We Are Called to Rise on more of the well-known top 10 lists for the year.

10. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
I had a hard time picking my favorite 10 titles, which means I’ll work on an “Honorable Mentions” list soon.  Yes Please is a book that came at the right time, with the right messages, for me.  Having hit a milestone birthday in 2014, so much about my world, and my place in it, felt clearer, and in some way that’s due to Amy Poehler sharing her experiences, challenging the way I see things, and giving voice to some of my own latent thoughts and ideas.  Although I can’t say this was even close to the best-written book I read last year, it has influenced me to action more than any other.  Maybe Ms. Poehler can start a Smart Women offshoot of her successful Smart Girls initiative…

Honorable mentions to come.

10 Best Books I Read in 2014, Part 1

Happy New Year!  One focus for 2015 is getting back to blogging, so even though this post may have been better timed as a year-end post, it's my first post of the new year.  I read A LOT of books last year -- 96 total, probably an all-time high I'm not likely to come close to again -- and the best of those were really, really great.  Here's Part 1 of my Top 10 books I read in 2014, in order (click on the title for my full Goodreads review):

1. Wool by Hugh Howey
   The best book I read in 2014 was published in 2012, but it was so exceptional in pretty much every way.  (I wish I could say the same for the second and third books in the series, but I can’t, and I won't.)  So I’ll heap lots of deserved praise on this one, which has got it all:  memorable and sympathetic characters, a unique setting, and a plot that unfolds masterfully.  
    
2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
   Give in to the hype.  You can almost feel yourself in this beautiful, futuristic setting, with these other survivors all around you, getting to know your tribe by hearing their stories.  Post-apocalyptic without being even a little bit sci-fi.
    
3. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
   This is the only non-fiction, non-memoir in my top 10 this year, either because the fiction was just so stellar or because I have become an unabashed fiction lover, but this is the only book I read in 2014 that I recommend to everyone, everywhere.  Yes.  EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK.  And then read it again.  And everyone should then talk about it, and decide what to do next.  It’s that kind of book.
    
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
   This has shown up on several top 10 lists I’ve seen this year, and I knew from the first few pages it would be on mine.  This novel just glows, so brightly that not even 500 printed pages can obscure the glow.  It made me warm from the inside out, and seemed to do so effortlessly.  It was fun reading a recent interview with Mr. Doerr, in which he talked about how all those little details that came across so effortlessly had often perplexed him when he was sorting out how to put it all together.
    
5. Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
   The liquid prose and flawless plot momentum serve as perfect foils to the complete stagnation we experience alongside our resident social worker hero, Pete Snow.  This is one of a couple books this year in which the story unfolded with the requisite tension of a good mystery.  Hooked me.

The rest of my top 10, plus honorable mentions, are coming soon (tomorrow?) to a blog near you (this one).

Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Really great, quick read, written in a very concise and crisp style.  My major takeaways:

1. Start at the epicenter and focus on the things that won’t change.
2. Sell your by-products.
3. Make tiny decisions.
4. Build an audience, and out-teach your competition.
5. Give away an easily digestible intro to what you sell.

I can absolutely start working on those now.  Getting this blog back on track is a tiny decision I could make tonight!  Chip chop!