Quitting Time

A Throwback Writing Article

This article was originally published at the Mad Genius Club on January 7, 2017. It also follows on from the throwback article I put up last week, so if you read one you might like the other as well.

It's not that I'm quitting reading, oh, no. What I did was learn how to put a bad book down instead of letting it suck part of my life away.

Yeah, there have been books that painful...

Only, sometimes it's not that the book is painfully bad. Sometimes it's me, not them. That's a horrible line for a break-up, but it's true in this case. I'm not always in the right place to read and appreciate a book, and I have learned that attempting to force myself to read a book usually winds up with me disliking the book. It took me several attempts to read Huckleberry Finn, and Anne of Green Gables. I knew I was supposed to like them, but I was young and for whatever reason couldn't break into the story.. and then when I did, I liked the books. I went on to read everything LM Montgomery had ever written and to realize how much like Anne I was as a girl.

I'm a mood reader. When I'm in a mood, I want a certain flavor of book, and trying to read outside that, even if it's a book I'm supposed to read for a good reason (like, say, to review on this blog) is usually a bad idea. So I've learned to put books down if I'm not in the mood, and not judge them unfairly. The books I intend to review I pick up again later, but if it's just a random novel that caught my eye I'm likely to not give it another look.

Like I talked about last week, I just don't have enough time to give some of it to an unworthy book. Sarah Hoyt wrote about things that throw readers out of books in this post, explaining why she doesn't like certain books:

Well, ten percent or so are unexplained. I just don’t get into them. No, I have no clue why. Why do you like some dishes and not others? Why do your tastes vary with season and mood? I don’t know.

However, for the other 40% I’ve found that there are broad categories of errors, from the massive to the small that just lead me to fling the book against the wall (virtually, since they’re on kindle.) And I thought I’d post them here, for the benefit (eh) of those of you working the word vines. I mean, whether you’re going traditional or indie, you REALLY should not pop your reader out. Read the rest...

With some books, you can just tell things are about to go horribly, horribly wrong...[/caption]

I think for me, the two biggest things that make it quitting time are boring, and bad characters. If I don't care about a character, but the pace is fast, I may keep reading. Even if I like a character, if the book is rambling on for pages about how they are dressed and nothing is happening, then I'm likely to wander off to check facebook, read a blog, draw a doodle.. and when I come back, I've forgotten that I was reading that book and start on something else. Even on the Kindle, where in theory you open back up to the page you were reading, I'll come out of the book to browse my library. The First Reader has had a recent problem with his Fire, in that it wants to always open to the very end of MH: Sinners, instead of the book he was trying to read. Makes it hard for him to keep on that book.

Which brings me to another point. My quitting time is not his quitting time is not your quitting time. My resident curmudgeon is much more critical of his reading material than I am. He's also super-sensitive to certain tropes that make him prickle up like a porcupine, and about as happy as one (I'm sure porcupines are sometimes happy. Why is it that hedgehogs are always pictured cute and cheerful, while porkies are bad-tempered? They need a new PR rep) when he encounters it in a book. I've pointed out that I'm sure most of the time the authors weren't trying to be tropariffic, but it doesn't matter. He's quit, and on to another book.

As a writer, I try to keep some of this in mind. Putting the reader hat on, I know that if I bore my readers, they're out. I know that my most specific negative reviews on my books have been from readers objecting to my writing a positive male character, or from a male POV. I'm not going to quit including men in my books who are strong, competent types that love well and work hard for their families (inspired, by the way, by my husband and father, and uncles and cousins, and...) so I'm going to ignore those readers while I'm writing. Because if that is their quitting time in a book, there are plenty out there with men being denigrated or relegated to the shrinking pansy role. I just don't want to write it, personally.

Now to flip it around. Sometimes a book does get better. It can be worth doing a bit of slogging, to find a buried treasure waiting. So how to decide that this book, this time, is the time to keep digging? Personally, I rely on word of mouth. Also, because I'm an author and part of a community of other authors, I rely on my personal knowledge of that person. If I trust them to tell a worthwhile story, I'll keep reading through the rough parts. I did this with the original unedited version of Mackey Chandler's April, and was rewarded with a great series I've enjoyed ever since. He's taken care of the editing since then, so if you haven't tried it, go check it out. Does it still have flaws? Sure, but those are philosophical and important only to me. And I have the ability to ignore elements in a book, up to a certain level, before it hits a wall. If you're a devout Evangelical Christian, there are elements in April that will set your teeth on edge, namely the portrayal of churches. For me, I could see the extrapolation from Westboro Baptist, and it didn't bother me (except that I really don't believe there's that much connectivity outside the Catholic Church, certainly not among the Baptist sets. But that's because I grew up in them).

Where do you decide it's quitting time? What books have you pushed through a tough reading spot on, and then been rewarded by?