My serious efforts to improve my writing began with an online subscription to Daphne Gray-Grant's Power Writing newsletter. I receive my weekly assignments for Extreme Writing Makeover from her on Fridays. This week's newsletter came today. She has the two in sync sometimes.
Today's newsletter covers improved reading habits. As with the writing assignment for the week, she has suggestions about what to read, when to emulate (copying practice), and how to keep track of what you have read.
Below are two of the seven tips she provided today. I find it difficult to detach myself from my spiral-bound notebooks. I have plastic storage binsful saved since the 1980's. It would be a long winter's task to create a personal computer log, go back and enter the book lists, and the book reviews I've written. What I enter on my desktop pc has to be available on my notebook pc. The list of books I have read on my Kindle already exists in two places, my spiral-bound notebook, and online in my Amazon.com archives.
Recently I discovered the benefit of Google Documents. I knew about cloud computing features. I can keep my pc logs in sync by using the Google cloud for file storage. Even as I write this blog post, I find it more difficult than writing my thoughts in my journal. Other lessons and practices cover this subject, how to write faster and better.
"5) Keep a record of what you have read. I have kept a book journal for the last 20 years. I don't always remember to record every single book but I try really hard. My journal used to be a spiral-bound notebook; I switched to a computer-based record about five years ago. I record the name of the book, its author, the publishing year, the first sentence of the book (sometimes a bit more) and one or two of my own thoughts. It takes me less than five minutes and I cannot tell you how many times this record has proven to be inordinately useful.
"6) Have a good system for tracking the names of books you want to read. I like to have my 'future reading' list with me at all times, ..."
My future reading list may be found in some of my handwritten journal. Often I have only a mental note of what I've read on the USA Today Best Sellers list. I try not to miss the Thursday edition. Occasional browsing of the top 100 free items listed on the Kindle Store has been a better source, not only to review, but to quickly download what I want.
As for what I want to save on my bookshelves, I am a collector, but not obsessive. Not only do I like the look and feel, but I want the real thing at hand for some of my favorites. Sometimes I'm surprised that I did not collect all the titles in a series. There are plenty of opportunities to get rid of books I no longer want.
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