Slow!

Here’s the thing. I’m a slow reader, especially when I’m reading a book I’ve waited years for. Yesterday I finally made it through the library queue and got ‘Dance with Dragons’. It’s 959 pages long! With a huge cast of characters and covering most of a world. I haven’t dipped into the other books in the series for a year or so, and have forgotten a lot of the characters and locations.

And I’ve got three weeks to read it! Three weeks filled with trying to edit my own novel full time, helping my daughter with homework, working in her classroom, driving her to school, making a meal or two, feeding the menagerie who live here, laundry, trying to get my publisher’s website up and running, putting all the summer stuff (lawn furniture, grill, etc.) away since it’s clear fall is coming, and all the other stuff of life.

So, I figure if I can manage 100 pages a day, of reading dense, dense prose, I can get it read in time. Because there’s no renewing this one with the huge waiting list.

The hard part is to work on my own writing when I’ve got this juicy thing to read. It’s always tempting to say, ‘Oh, I’ll just work on my own stuff tomorrow.’ But since I’ve spent years doing that I know tomorrow never comes. You just have to do the work. Every day.

So, I’m off to work on my novel. And after that to read as fast as I can!