June 1, 2006
Thursday 

I once served under a principal who was a math teacher by training. He tended to see everything in terms of numbers and could calculate ratios swiftly and precisely. Once he observed a class I conducted, and in the evaluation he noted that I had said um seventeen times in a forty-two-minute period, which worked out to one um every 2.47 minutes. He recommended that I reduce the use of um by half, making the count 8.5 instances in forty-two minutes and thus increasing the interval to 4.94 minutes.

Another time, after I had experienced a lengthy illness and been unable to serve as the debate club chaperone for all of the sessions scheduled, he determined that I had completed five-ninths of the contract and would be paid an amount equal to that fraction of the whole. And while I acknowledge that that was certainly fair, I’m sure my readers can appreciate that the relationship between my dreamy poetic self and this meticulous, often inflexible man was at times difficult.

One gift he gave me, however, was the ability, when it might be useful, to count the number of items in a set, sort them into categories, and calculate what part of the whole each category represented. I did just that last August in order to have a record of my book purchasing habits.

When I returned from Vermont in August of 2004 I began a list of the books I’d bought there. I was putting into practice a “clutter control” maxim: Get current and stay current. That is, sort and label the latest roll of film, and the next one when it comes in, and the next one, and when you have time, pluck one envelope from the drawer where you’ve dumped the last ten years of pictures and start filling in the blanks. The strategy works for any collection of things that you tend to add to and then lose track of.

Most of the books I bought in Vermont in 2004 were by the writers who taught at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference that summer. I kept adding to the list as I bought new books. When I analyzed the data, I discovered that in the twelve-month period beginning in August 2004 and ending in August of 2005, I bought 41 books. Of those 41 books, five were intended as gifts, bringing the total that I bought for myself to 36. Of those 36 books, 11 (or about 30%, 29.972972% if you are my former principal) were fiction, 23 (65%) were nonfiction, and 2 (5%) were poetry.

It surprised me that I bought twice as much nonfiction as I did fiction, mostly personal essays and memoirs. And though I often say, “I don’t just read poetry, I buy poetry!,” I don’t think two titles a year really puts me on the front lines of the fight to save poetry.

OK, I bought 36 books. What did I actually read?

Eight, it turns out. About a quarter of the total. And, I have to say, since some of those books were anthologies (Best American Short Stories, Best American Spiritual Writing, a collection of short stories with an essay by each author about the genesis of the piece). I really only read in them, the way one might read in the Bible or a reference work.

And, worse, my actual reading was more than 75% nonfiction. If I claim that I want to develop as a fiction writer, and if a writer must be a reader, then why am I reading so little fiction?

On the day the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference of 2005 started I set some reading goals for the next year. I determined to increase my overall reading significantly, and to increase the portion that was fiction to 50%.

How did I do? Read tomorrow’s post for a report on that!

(I have just used a device that was popular in the series books for children that I grew up on. The chapters of the Bobbsey Twins books and the Nancy Drew and Dana Girls mysteries often ended with a question or a foreshadowing of the twist to come in the next chapter. It’s a strategy that would get me laughed out of a critique group now, but it certainly kept me turning pages!)

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