Memoirs, Lit Fic, Not Hating Myself???!

It is, to quote Howard Ashman in a manner unrelated to that of which he was writing, a whole new world.

Reading for My Life

Dear Readers,

I have been reading a ton lately. And the books have been good to great. I love this feeling!

While I love writing romance and other books with happy endings (and “happy endings” I guess STOP AMY), I read widely-ish across genres, which is mainly to say I spend a lot of time also reading literary fiction, memoirs, and nonfiction about (mainly) American Culture in the twentieth and twenty-first century. This is not some sort of concerted effort to expand my horizons; I just read what I want to read. Life is FIGURATIVELY (fingers crossed) short and there are just SO MANY BOOKS and anyway I like reading widely enough that my horizons can be expanded but also I have come to feel good about the amount of variety on my figurative shelves (I’m an ebook reader) and less like I’m doing something not-enough or too-much.

In general I have spent a lot of my life feeling like I’m doing not-enough or too-much, sometimes simultaneously, which is both exhausting and confusing. Exhausting and confusing are also two words I’d use to describe life as a human being, often. Or maybe just as me, a specific human being. Not to put words in your mouth about yourself!

Throughout my twenties and peaking in my thirties, I was convinced I had some kind of moral/ethical shortcoming in not being a writer of literary fiction. Those, I knew, were the true artists. From not having an MFA to being told by peers if writing felt easy that I probably wasn’t pushing myself hard enough, I lived in a constant state of I’m Actually Not That Good, Actually! I’d let you know, if you asked! Maybe if you didn’t!