Day #143: Inspiration, Again
I forgot until I got a gentle reminder yesterday that I had been invited to join a book group...and I had actually read the book!
This is the second book group invitation I've received since the beginning of the quarantine and I think it's fairly safe to say I won't be able to commit to both of them. I tend to get kinda finicky when I'm told what to read which is why I had up until this point been avoiding book groups. Actually, up until this month I had participated in exactly two of them, both of them I was in charge of. As a librarian intern while in grad school I inherited the book group that none of the librarians wanted and I was the intern so I got it. I found the book choices annoying and would usually skim the book and then try to structure generic questions that would get participants talking so I could tune out.
Then, in my first real grown up post grad school librarian job I ran a book group for teens in a tiny small-town library. General word on the street is that teen book groups don't work real well. Other kinds of book programs for teens work, but the traditional model of everyone reads the same book and comes together to discuss it is not perceived as being super teen friendly. This might be true but in this tiny quaint little town with many homeschooled teenagers a teen book group caught on and I ran it for half a year. It was actually kind of nice because being teenagers they read the kind of YA books that are also my jam because I apparently never grew up as a reader.
So I guess what I'm saying is I don't have a ton of experience with book groups. I participated in the first one I was invited to a couple of weeks ago, it was okay except I hated the book. I had been invited to the one that was this morning and then I forgot all about it...I guess I never got the email...but I did read the book and then yesterday the lady sent me a message saying are you interested and I decided to jump in. I'm so glad I did.
The book was Felon: poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts and I think what I said to the lady when we connected via Instagram was that I thought it would be great to be part of a book group that would discuss this kind of book...so she invited me. I knew NOTHING about this group, but they were SUPER nice, she was very prepared and even better she had a poet friend of hers who had originally suggested the book sit in with us so he could kind of help decode the poetry part for us just a bit. And that was so lovely and so inspiring.
I feel like I'm in such a weird weird place in my life right now because I continue to be an avid reader and pusher of diverse literature and I really love my profession, but I've been out of it now for a long time. When the library is open I'm there occasionally working but I'm really not enormously connected professionally to anything. And I still want to write but I can barely find the time to do this and I just feel the years slipping away and that dream with them. When I introduced myself to this group I told them I was a librarian and mom and I also said I was an aspiring writer and poet, which I totally am and I still identify that way but I feel that way less and less.
The funny thing is, as I was talking to them, I started thinking more about what I want to write. I do want to do a novel in verse, I have a draft of one but it's not exactly what I want. I want to write YA and I want it to be historical or have historical elements. I want there to be a bit of historical mystery and I want the main character to be a detective poet. I have some influences from my family history that I want to throw in there and I want her to write poetry in a pretty specific way. I also want there to be a kind of narrowing of the family line...I know this doesn't make sense...but families tend to expand, the generations are fruitful and multiply and that's why there are more cousins each generation down. But some families have to go the other way, there are losses and contractions and people end up isolated. I want to play with that a bit...a family that was once big and isn't.
Anyway, I said out loud in this book group of strangers what I want to do and write and I think I need to find some way of making time for it...even time to just open up a document and start throwing stuff into it...I think a little bit of novel planning this summer and fall would make me feel a lot better about where I am professionally right now...and I gotta be honest, as I watch my husband do his job search I don't feel awesome about where I am professionally right now.
After the book group, though, I had to do what I do...shake off that little moment of being just Kris and go back into Mom mode, take the kids out of the house to give Josh some time to prep for his job interviews next week, deal with grumpy Max who wanted to walk and then went on strike, and make James pick up all the Legos (AGAIN) before I would record a podcast episode with him. I wouldn't trade life with them for anything, but you can see how it's easy to get just a bit lost. I think I need to keep holding on to that conversation with the poet. And I think this book group will stick...I already put the next book they are reading on hold, it was already one I wanted to read so I think we are on the same wavelength. And it is kinda nice to be a part of a book group for the first time in my life that I don't have to run.
Media consumption: finished The Left Hand of Darkness last night and started Whereas, the last of the poetry books I bought in April. It is fascinating but a lot...I think it will take some doing to really access it. And then this morning I started Redwood and Ponytail which is a sweet little innocent romance between two seventh grade girls in verse...it's got this whole Greek chorus going on, completely adorable.
Today I'm grateful for literary talk with strangers, feeling a little better (not sick, just girl stuff,) that feeling when both my kids try to hold my hand at the same time, and safe travels for my sister's family who are on their way here.
This is the second book group invitation I've received since the beginning of the quarantine and I think it's fairly safe to say I won't be able to commit to both of them. I tend to get kinda finicky when I'm told what to read which is why I had up until this point been avoiding book groups. Actually, up until this month I had participated in exactly two of them, both of them I was in charge of. As a librarian intern while in grad school I inherited the book group that none of the librarians wanted and I was the intern so I got it. I found the book choices annoying and would usually skim the book and then try to structure generic questions that would get participants talking so I could tune out.
Then, in my first real grown up post grad school librarian job I ran a book group for teens in a tiny small-town library. General word on the street is that teen book groups don't work real well. Other kinds of book programs for teens work, but the traditional model of everyone reads the same book and comes together to discuss it is not perceived as being super teen friendly. This might be true but in this tiny quaint little town with many homeschooled teenagers a teen book group caught on and I ran it for half a year. It was actually kind of nice because being teenagers they read the kind of YA books that are also my jam because I apparently never grew up as a reader.
So I guess what I'm saying is I don't have a ton of experience with book groups. I participated in the first one I was invited to a couple of weeks ago, it was okay except I hated the book. I had been invited to the one that was this morning and then I forgot all about it...I guess I never got the email...but I did read the book and then yesterday the lady sent me a message saying are you interested and I decided to jump in. I'm so glad I did.
The book was Felon: poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts and I think what I said to the lady when we connected via Instagram was that I thought it would be great to be part of a book group that would discuss this kind of book...so she invited me. I knew NOTHING about this group, but they were SUPER nice, she was very prepared and even better she had a poet friend of hers who had originally suggested the book sit in with us so he could kind of help decode the poetry part for us just a bit. And that was so lovely and so inspiring.
I feel like I'm in such a weird weird place in my life right now because I continue to be an avid reader and pusher of diverse literature and I really love my profession, but I've been out of it now for a long time. When the library is open I'm there occasionally working but I'm really not enormously connected professionally to anything. And I still want to write but I can barely find the time to do this and I just feel the years slipping away and that dream with them. When I introduced myself to this group I told them I was a librarian and mom and I also said I was an aspiring writer and poet, which I totally am and I still identify that way but I feel that way less and less.
The funny thing is, as I was talking to them, I started thinking more about what I want to write. I do want to do a novel in verse, I have a draft of one but it's not exactly what I want. I want to write YA and I want it to be historical or have historical elements. I want there to be a bit of historical mystery and I want the main character to be a detective poet. I have some influences from my family history that I want to throw in there and I want her to write poetry in a pretty specific way. I also want there to be a kind of narrowing of the family line...I know this doesn't make sense...but families tend to expand, the generations are fruitful and multiply and that's why there are more cousins each generation down. But some families have to go the other way, there are losses and contractions and people end up isolated. I want to play with that a bit...a family that was once big and isn't.
Anyway, I said out loud in this book group of strangers what I want to do and write and I think I need to find some way of making time for it...even time to just open up a document and start throwing stuff into it...I think a little bit of novel planning this summer and fall would make me feel a lot better about where I am professionally right now...and I gotta be honest, as I watch my husband do his job search I don't feel awesome about where I am professionally right now.
After the book group, though, I had to do what I do...shake off that little moment of being just Kris and go back into Mom mode, take the kids out of the house to give Josh some time to prep for his job interviews next week, deal with grumpy Max who wanted to walk and then went on strike, and make James pick up all the Legos (AGAIN) before I would record a podcast episode with him. I wouldn't trade life with them for anything, but you can see how it's easy to get just a bit lost. I think I need to keep holding on to that conversation with the poet. And I think this book group will stick...I already put the next book they are reading on hold, it was already one I wanted to read so I think we are on the same wavelength. And it is kinda nice to be a part of a book group for the first time in my life that I don't have to run.
Media consumption: finished The Left Hand of Darkness last night and started Whereas, the last of the poetry books I bought in April. It is fascinating but a lot...I think it will take some doing to really access it. And then this morning I started Redwood and Ponytail which is a sweet little innocent romance between two seventh grade girls in verse...it's got this whole Greek chorus going on, completely adorable.
Today I'm grateful for literary talk with strangers, feeling a little better (not sick, just girl stuff,) that feeling when both my kids try to hold my hand at the same time, and safe travels for my sister's family who are on their way here.
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