[image description: a wooden chair with an old brown hardback book in the seat of the chair and a bouquet of white flowers on top.]
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Happy 2020! It’s the first post of the new year, so I’ve been thinking a lot about what this coming year and decade might bring.

Fun fact: New Year’s Eve is actually one of my favorite holidays.

I love that bustling feeling of new beginnings, new opportunities, and the chance to start anew. Although you can technically start over any time, I like how our society at large is suddenly committed to becoming the people they most want to be, all at the same time.

I always look forward to creating my reading and writing resolutions every year, but this year, I’m drawing a blank.

I think it’s because every year I tend to hit my reading goal, but fail at my writing goal. I still get a lot of writing done and I get published in better venues every year, but I’ve been working on one manuscript since 2016 and another since 2018, and they’re still not finished.

Lately, I’ve started wondering if I read “too much.” Not “too much” in the general sense (because it’s impossible to read too much!), but too much in order to finish my manuscripts in a timely manner. I’ve seen writers on Twitter say they read 25 or 40 books a year, which is a great amount and I’m not shaming them for not reading as much as me. Though until recently I thought it was strange that so many authors wouldn’t be reading more. Then it hit me: oh yeah, they’re too busy writing their own books.

It’s possible I’m just being cynical and, in fact, I hope I am. But it’s got me thinking. Has my goal of reading 100+ books a year kept me from writing more?

So this year, I want to do a little something different. I want at least 20 of the books I read to be things that get me closer to completing my various writing projects. There’s so much research I need to do and things I need to work through personally that I’ve been putting off. By giving myself a concrete goal, I’ll do a better job of sticking to what needs doing.

For example, here are a few of the books I need to read for research purposes:

For my memoir, Redneck Palestinian:

Fast Times in Palestine: A Love Affair with a Homeless Homeland by Pamela J. Olson.

Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation, an anthology

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence, an anthology edited by Michele Filgate

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

Palestine by Joe Sacco

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie

For various novel projects in various states of completion:

Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America by John McMillian

The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton

So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel by Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch

100 Days in the Life of Rutherford Hayes by Eric Ebinger

So, in a way, my reading resolution and my writing resolution for 2020 are inextricably linked. This is my plan to move my writing forward through specific, targeted reading.

You’d think that after being a writer for most of my life I’d have thought of this before, but honestly, I haven’t. I’ve always thought of my reading life and writing life as two sides of the same coin, but still separate. Reading is what I do for fun (and previously what I did to get through school) and writing was what I did to feed my soul and––hopefully one day––make a living. Both bring me immense joy, though they serve different purposes in my life.

As such, this will be the first year that my reading resolution includes specific books, rather than a numerical goal or diversity goal. (Both of those things are important too and I’m not tossing them by the wayside.)

I’ve also noticed a general restlessness in my life recently, like I’ve been doing the same things for too long and I want to shake things up. I’ve been running one of my book clubs for 3 years and the other for 4 years. I’ve been running this blog for 5 years. I’ve been at my day job for 5 years. And I’ve been living in Columbus for 4 years.

These are all things I like and care deeply about, so I’m not sure what “shake things up” means yet. Maybe it’s passing the book clubs off to another person and/or somehow making the planning process easier on myself. Maybe it’s taking more weekend trips out of the city. Maybe it’s making this blog more personal, like a letter to you, or more political since there are SO MANY issues in the book world that I don’t even touch on. Or maybe it’s making more videos as opposed to text-only posts. Is it time to succumb to the millennial siren song of starting a podcast??

I do know that I’m feeling the call to try new things. I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens. It might surprise us both! :)

I’d love to hear what your reading resolutions are! If you’re so inclined, leave a comment below.