Starting over with diaries
I like letters that shows the marks of how it was made. The best passages are the ones I copied out by hand. Most of what I know about novels came from getting it wrong first. Margins are where reading turns into thinking.
What I kept
What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed. The first two weeks were largely about unlearning. If something here is unclear, that is on me, not you. The first nine weeks were largely about unlearning.
A good library card is the cheapest luxury there is. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. It took me nine attempts to see the pattern. This is less a primer and more a record of what worked for me. Some of this will be self-evident; some of it took me years.
I keep a short list of things to try next; rereading is near the top. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about novels. The first four weeks were largely about unlearning. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works. Little, repeatable steps beat big plans nearly every time.
I wrote most of this on a calm Monday morning.
What changed
Thanks for reading, and for the kind observations that keep arriving. Here is what shifted, and what stayed exactly the same. The best advice I got was plainly to slow down. I wrote most of this on a calm Saturday morning. I read it once quickly and once gradually, and they were different books.
It is not glamorous, but it holds up. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. I keep coming back to letters, largely because it rewards patience. I tested the well-worn version first. It did not last.
long bookslibraries