Making time to read what’s offered unsolicited…

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

I know it is hard enough to make a dent in the stacks of books and periodicals in your own mental queue. Add to that the book or two you are reading for school, work, or your book club and the one you’re reading more for self-improvement than pleasure. You also have at least a few periodical subscriptions piling up and you really ought to read more poetry, don’t you think?

I’m with you.

Today, though, I made an exception. A colleague of mine waltzed into my classroom carrying a two foot pile of fresh copies for his students. When I realized that the reason the whole pile nearly tipped over onto my floor was that he had printed something else–something extra–for me.

I had plenty more pressing duties today, but somehow, in between this and that, I managed to read the four NY Times articles this friend had offered unsolicited. He did not say why he printed them for me. I suppose because I am an English teacher and they were all about sentences, fiction, and books.

I read them all and enjoyed them all for their thought-provoking ideas and found among them four of five lines to use in class or just to underline and write a heart next to (what I do when I really like a sentence).

Here are the articles this history teacher who totally didn’t have the time to think of what I might read and enjoy but did anyway passed on to me:

“The Sentence As A Miniature Narrative” by Constance Hale

“My Life’s Sentences” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“Your Brain On Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul

“The Way We Read Now” by Dwight Garner

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.