Writers are readers too, right?

Q: Writing isn’t all that we do, is it? What’s your second favorite activity?

- from Susan Shea

A: I’d love to bluff by saying running half marathons, or baking my own bread, but the truth is much more mundane. I love to work in my unruly, uncooperative garden, talking to the tomatoes (“ripen, for heaven’s sake”), reveling in the scents of herbs, roses, and pineapple sage, and dreaming about the perfect garden that my imagination and the gardening magazines tell me I should have.

I find that gardening is an activity that keeps me firmly in the present moment. No worrying about how well book sales are going or if my editor will love the new manuscript. Not having internal conversations with people I talked to last week, debating a point I forgot to mention. No Trump. It’s very zen.

Reading is a close second, although there’s a small voice in my head that persists in telling me I shouldn’t be wasting time sitting and reading when I could be, oh, I don’t know, folding laundry or washing the car. I admit I postpone reading a good book at times because I am going to get to the laundry. Funny thing is, I drift over to the computer instead and get hung up on the latest political insanity, kitten and puppy photos posted by my FB friends, a bit of research for the manuscript in progress. The towels are still in the dryer when I realize it’s dinnertime.

All that procrastination makes it clear I should just get on with it and write, take an hour off to deadhead roses, and make a list of chores that I can check off tomorrow for permission to read after I’ve washed the car. Yeah, right.

The reading that’s tempting me right now:

·      Danny Gardner’s A Negro and an Ofay (3/4 read and I’m loving it)

·      Tim Hallinan’s The Hot Countries, which I keep holding up as a reward for finishing other work

·      Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders

·      Cara Black’s Murder in Saint-Germain (she and I are doing events together this summer since we both write crime fiction set in France)