Hello Monday

Hello to a new week! I had a quiet and relatively restful weekend and am so ready to start a new week. My notebook is set up and ready to be covered in another week’s worth of activities and our homeschooling schedule is filled to the brim; I have ideas to take to the library on Thursday that I’m excited to get started on. My “happy to-do” list is larger than my “have to-do” list and that is a very nice change!

This week is forecasted to be cool (in the mid-70s) and partly cloudy – perfect for reading under the maple tree. And probably most importantly: the hummingbirds are back. I’ve had two sightings and Matthew has picked up their tiny chirp on his Merlin app. Sitting at my desk early in the morning while they zoom in for tiny sips from the feeder is a summer highlight for me! Today’s blog post is just a small round up of thoughts on writing and reading. I hope that focusing on these things at the beginning of the week will get me going on the right track!

---

Writing:

Last Friday I wrote about seeking time for reading and writing. I have been tracking the time I spend writing since the beginning of 2022 and have discovered that I spend more time here at my desk than I would give myself credit for. A rough estimate would be about an hour a day, most of it before 6am, which isn’t too shabby for my current purposes. Of course, there are days when I don’t wake up early enough to sit at all but those days happen less often than I think.

So here’s my self-reminder: Just do the best you can. Show up to your desk when you’re able and let the other mornings go. It all evens out in the end. And those semi-frequent afternoon naps while turning on the TV for the kids? They’re okay too. So are the afternoon espressos.

---

Reading:

I couldn’t help myself and ordered Yellowface on Saturday. It arrived Sunday evening and I started it almost immediately. Dear readers – it is so much fun! I’m only about 50 pages in, but my jaw has dropped so many times. In this novel, June Hayward steals a nearly completed manuscript written by her frenemy, Athena Liu, after she dies. After putting her finishing touches on it, Hayward submits the document to her own agent who goes wild about it. Throughout the editing process, Liu’s vision of writing about Chinese racism throughout WWI becomes diluted and whitewashed – all while Hayward justifies her own appropriation of Liu’s original words and ideas. And this is all in the first 50 pages! I cannot wait to see what else happens.

Kuang’s writing is sharp, hip, and speaks to our time. If you read Babel, then you already know how well she can take a small kernel and create a whole world around it. In Babel, she challenged racism within the academic world. Yellowface is her takedown of the publishing industry and I am here for it!

I didn’t want to spend any money on books until the Booker list is released this summer, but this felt urgent. And I don’t regret a cent!

---

I hope you’re feeling refreshed and ready to go this morning. Tell me: how was your own weekend? Are you reading anything you’d like to share with me? How is your writing going? I’d love to catch up with you in the comments and via email. I’m planning to be back on Wednesday with a reading update. Take good care!