With the help of Natalie Goldberg in her book, Thunder and Lightening: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft, I learned how to purchase books that engage and feed my interest, and that entertain.
I read the first page. If putting the book back on the shelf causes distress, leaves me hungering to know more about what will happen with the characters then I purchase it.
If not, then it’s for me.
This method has never failed me.
It has also taught me much as a writer.
Just as the writer’s time cannot be wasted, so too the reader’s time holds utmost value.
But here is where it gets tricky.
In our efforts to fill the reader’s hunger for more to read, publishers, both traditional and self publishers somehow developed the idea, the belief, that the industry must provide more books and at a quicker pace.
Quickly written, these books are often of poor quality. On a treadmill of trying with all their might to honor publishing contracts into which they have entered writers and authors face burnout.
The best books are written in their own time, not according to the desires and hunger of the readers, the need to maintain a bottom line, or worse yet, the need for publicity, exposure and fame.
The best books emerge from writers surrendering ourselves to the process, a process of undergoing transformation as we create that for which our soul hungers.
Ann Patchett says, “Sometimes to read the book you desire or want, you must write it.”
Toni Morrison clarifies this even more. “I wrote my first book so I could read it.”