YOURS IN BOOKS cover!
LOOK AT HOW CUTE THIS COVER IS! That's the cover of my next book, Yours in Books, about a grumpy owl who orders books from his local neighborhood bookshop, and the astute booksquirrel who owns the shop doesn't send him the book he wants, but the book he needs. It's a story of friendship and writing letters. And it's definitely about how your local independent bookstore will connect you with exactly the book you need.
In fact, it's such a love letter to bookstores that I named the bookstore in the book "Pine: A Bookshop" in honor of my own beloved local indie, Print: A Bookstore.
And if you're looking at that cover and thinking, "Wow, I sure would like to live in that cover!" then I assure you that illustrator Gabriel Alborozo has filled this book with page after page of interiors you want to live in. Plus there's a map on the endpapers! SWOON.
Yours in Books is coming from Cameron Kids/Abrams August 24, 2021, and you can preorder it now. If you preorder from Print: A Bookstore, it's almost like preordering from the bookstore in the book, and your preorder will be signed by me.
Putting in the hours
I revised a novel last year. My goal was to finish it by the end of March, but then, well, you know. I finally finished in October. I was pretty sure it was done, anyway. And then I sent it to my agent, who said, "Well, this is funny, but it has no plot." She was right! Something was holding this book back, and I could not figure it out.
Then I read Deep Work by Cal Newport (a book that came out in 2016, so maybe you've already read it?). This book scared the bezeekers out of me. It's about doing deep work -- the kind of thoughtful creative work where you get flow -- and how modern society is abundant with opportunities for shallow work, like dealing with emails, pointless meetings, and social media. Here's a terrifying quote: "Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work."
You need to consciously set aside time for deep work -- for long stretches of intentional, uninterrupted thinking. Doing so builds up myelin, "a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster and cleaner." Doing deep work builds up your ability to do more deep work.
The book doesn't argue that you can never check email or go on social media, but that you should be mindful about it. The book is pretty serious about how bad it is to indiscriminately switch between deep and shallow work. Essentially, if you switch around a lot, you're completely ruining your brain's ability to do deep work, MAYBE FOREVER.
That novel I worked on last year? It wasn't good enough because it was completely done in a state of shallow work. Now, okay, if ever there was a year that shoved us all down the road of constantly checking the internet, it was 2020. But I have now written a book where I would write one sentence and then reward myself by checking Twitter. And I have seen that that's a terrible way to write a book.
See that post-it note in the photo above? That's where I'm keeping track of my deep work sessions. Newport recommends quantifying it, so you can see how long you're actually doing deep work. So I write the time when I start, and then intentionally work for as long as I can, without checking anything else. If I get antsy, I get up and walk around. But I don't check the internet, because the internet doesn't let me think and imagine about my story.
This is the page from my journal where I'm keeping track. It's a little embarrassing to share it, because you see some of those days I didn't have any deep work at all. But like Haruki Murakami talks about in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, building up skills takes time and effort. I started keeping track and realized that I had regularly been doing zero hours of deep work. The first two weeks I regularly did about an hour of focused, uninterrupted, undistracted, deep work. This week I'm trying for an hour and a half, next week I'll do two. I'll build it like a muscle, and make my book better, and my imagination better, in the process.
It has been a long time since I had a bolt of inspiration. It has been a long time since I got a great book idea as I was falling asleep. It has been a long time since my characters talked to me while I was out on a walk. I'll be honest: I hate that. I don't like what 2020 did to me, although I certainly understand why. But now I'm at a fork in the road, and shallow work is the easy path I'm already on, and deep work is the harder but massively better path.
Thoughts and Links
My friend Ruth Chan, who illustrated my book The Great Indoors, has three books coming out in 2021, they are all amazing, and you should preorder them now: 1. The Alpactory: Ready, Pack, Go! 2. Have You Seen Gordon, written by Adam Jay Epstein, and 3. Thank You, Neighbor. She also illustrated a new book of Jack Prelutsky poems that came out in January called Hard-Boiled Bugs for Breakfast: And Other Tasty Poems, and you should probably buy that now too.
My friend Iva-Marie Palmer has a new newsletter, and it's great. She's put out two so far, interviewing writers by asking them five non-writing questions and one writing question (but of course it all ends up being about writing, somehow). The interviews are specific and riveting, and reading them is like sitting on a chair at a party and eavesdropping on two cooler people chatting on the couch next to you.
While I'm talking about my writing friends, I'll link again to Lindsay Eagar's writing courses. Lindsay has helped me with my writing so much, and her 80/20 Fast Draft course begins again on March 23 -- if you want to write faster, and better, I recommend it.
I just signed up for Hayley Chewins's 100 Ideas in 10 Days course -- it looks like just what I need right now as I'm striving for more deep work inspiration.
I loved the book Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony. If you like science, zoology, misbehaving politicians, romantic taxidermy, and dual narratives, you'll like it too. Plus it's the only book I've ever read that starts with and em-dash, in the middle of a sentence, and it could have done almost anything after that and I would have been wholly on board.
I'm in week 8 of The Artist's Way, which means I've been burning through journals and pens by writing three pages every morning. I've used two Cognitive Surplus softcover "The Experiment" journals and just cracked open a slightly larger hardcover journal. These journals are lovely -- the paper is nice and the covers are so pretty. I've been ordering various gel pens from JetPens, mostly that I found from some of their super fun pen samplers. My current favorites are the Zebra Sarasa in vintage colors, the Pilot Juice, the Pilot Juice Up, the Paper Mate InkJoy.
I watched the 2012 movie about Wayne White, Beauty is Embarrassing, and it was eye-poppingly inspiring. It's making me think about not just making art, but living life artistically. Though it also made me think about how White's wife, Mimi Pond, took care of everything and put her own career on hold for many years while their kids were young so that Wayne White could create his big imaginative art. I've also recently learned about the artist Jeila Gueramian, and I am in love with her riotous fanciful installations. I keep thinking that I'll get to a point in my life where I want uncluttered serenity, but all I've ever wanted around me is multicolored crammed spaces, so maybe it's time to accept that that's what I prefer.
