Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1251:
Brief check-in: I felt I was back up to speed yesterday with words written ( 660) and exercise (2 hours), and with only one phone call. Today, I’ve done what cleaning I can, with my husband only taking a short walk this morning, Rio came over to play, and now I have written and will post this piece. I have one scheduled call this afternoon, but I might try to do my walk before that call, since the storm will be starting to move in this evening.
Celebrations:
My word count streak:
Starting last weekend, I had four days in a row with at least 1000 words written, so a very nice streak. Of course, then I had two days with no words at all written, for a variety of reasons. But I am still celebrating the streak, and hoping for another this coming week.
Reading the special edition of A Secret Garden
My daughter gave me a special illustrated, interactive edition of The Secret Garden for Christmas. I don’t think I ever read it, although we have an edition of it among the books we got for my daughter, so I expect she read it. I am about a third of the way through and thoroughly enjoying it. But what I want to celebrate is my decision to only read it in bits and pieces during the day when I boil water in my electric kettle for tea.
See photos to give you an idea of its size, illustrations, including clever little inserts that are in almost every chapter.
My motivation for reading it in this fashion was that I knew I wasn’t going to concentrate on reading it right now when I am busy finishing up the novel I am working on. As I’ve shared, the only print fiction I have been reading has been short stories on my kindle that I read for about 10 minutes before we turn the lights out. And this book is too large and too delicate to read sitting up in bed.
The second reason I chose to start to read this book when I boil the kettle is because I have a habit of putting the kettle on and then going into the next room to either check my email or read some substack newsletters, “while I wait.” Inevitably about ten or fifteen minutes later, I realize the kettle had been ready for some time, and I have to turn it on again and reheat it. Since the book is big, and is easiest to read laying flat on the dining room table (not a terribly comfortable way to read but, otherwise, holding it hurts my arthritic wrists), I decided to read it while the kettle is heating. That way, when the ding of the kettle goes off, I am more likely to get up and fix my tea. Which is exactly what has happened. When you calculate I boil water for tea at least 4-5 times a day, this means that I am probably only reading the book for about 8-10 minutes a day, total. However, even if this going to take me a long time to finish the book, it means that I will finish it, not put it away and forget about it.
In addition, I have decided this is the perfect way to read this particular book.
From an early age, I was a speed reader. I even took some sort of experimental speed-reading class one summer when I was about 8, (and that alone is sort of odd, since it would have been about 1958, so now I want to go research whether teaching children to speed read was a thing back then.) Anyway, this class explicitly taught us how to skim, not reading every word and every sentence. This ability generally ahs served me well throughout my life, both in terms of my recreational reading, and later my academic career. For example, when I got to graduate school and had to read copious amount of material in very short periods of time for my doctorate, this skill came in handy, and I could see how people who were used to reading slowly, savoring every word, every sentence really had difficulty. One poor man, who had been a philosophy major as an undergraduate, really had trouble adjusting.
However, being a speed reader didn’t particularly serve me well as a writer, (or someone who had to grade students papers. This was because I had spent most of my life not paying attention to grammar, parts of speech, etc, which you don’t even notice when speed reading. As both a teacher and a writer, this means I still have to look up the rules because I have no intuitive sense of when a sentence has errors.
And this brings me back to why I have found reading this special edition of The Secret Garden illuminating.
What I have discovered is that since I am reading this book (written in early 20th century so definitely written in a literary style) in such small increments (maybe only a page or two at a time), I am reading it slowly, word by word, sentence by sentence, which I am quite sure is the way it should be read.
So, I’m celebrating this a win-win! I am not wasting time reheating the kettle, or standing watching it. I am, in fact reading this book, which I am enjoying. And I am probably reading it at a pace that is increasing that enjoyment!
So, ta da! these are my celebrations this week, what are yours?
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I too was introduced to speed reading in 5th grade, about 1958. I still lose comprehension when I speed read, so it wasn't much use to me in school. However, I do fine it useful when an author has long descriptive passages on topics I don't care about. Another reading aid was SQ3R, short for Survey, Question, Read, Review and I've forgotten the second R. This I have used extensively, first in college many years ago, and lately in my Continuing Education classes. The method does help me remember what I've read!
I would like to know more about how Rio began coming for play dates.