A must-read.

If you're reading this, I'm guessing this link is going to prove useful.

Which one is your biggest bugaboo? I've narrowed it down to two, myself: 20 and 22.

Go read the post. Then come back and tell me a story, and tell me what you're going to do differently.

Banned Books Week

(image via the ALA website)

It's Banned Books Week here in the U.S.-- an annual celebration of intellectual freedom in this country. I've long been a fan of the ideals behind BBW, not to mention its slightly-sassy, contrarian underpinnings.

OK, I might be projecting a little bit on that last part.

I find myself feeling a little inarticulate (I just wrote "unarticulate") when I try to express how much this all means to me. Books should be a safe place for people everywhere to explore new ideas, learn about the world, and come to understand themselves better.

In the grand tradition of "putting your money where your mouth is," I'm a big, big fan of purchasing as many books that appear on the Frequently Challenged list as I can. It's hard not to notice that an awful lot of the books on recent lists deal with LGBT issues, along with many other tough subjects I care a lot about. Buying these books is a good way for me, as a reader, to communicate that to publishers-- and to help ensure that publishers will continue to take a chance on these "difficult" issue-driven books.

Here's the list of the Most Frequently Challenged books from the past decade. How many have you read?

On headaches.

I've been getting a lot of headaches lately-- eyestrain, mostly, I think. I've been a migraine sufferer for about 25 years now, and I get occasional sinus headaches and weather headaches as well, so I am pretty good at telling the difference.

Having a headache makes everything a little more difficult. I move more slowly (literally), I get irritable more quickly. It takes longer to accomplish even fairly simple tasks, and it wreaks havoc on my attention span-- especially bad on days when my big plan is to power through a bunch of manuscripts, or when I'm redlining a contract.

I thought all of this would be easier to juggle when I was finally free to make my own schedule and set my own agenda (as I am now)... but I find that I'm really hard on myself on days when I haven't accomplished as much as I thought I should, or as much as I planned to.

Why is that? Having had headaches for most of my life now, I'm actually pretty good about not leaving things till the absolute last minute, because I know I can't assume I'll be in any state to do them at said crisis point; there's always a chance I'll be laid up with a migraine, where a dark, quiet room is the only thing worth having in this life. In other words, I KNOW what headaches do to me, and I KNOW a headache is always a possibility.

To get to the real point of this post, then, I have two questions for you guys:

1) Do you have any amazing headache remedies? Here are some things I'm already doing: getting enough sleep, drinking lots of water, maintaining my caffeine intake (I usually drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning), exercising, taking Excedrin or acetaminophen for an especially bad headache. I had an eye exam less than two months ago. I'm pretty bad about taking breaks from the computer, so I know that's a big one to work on.

2) What do you do when you fail to meet your own expectations? I know a lot of you have word count goals and the like; what happens when you don't meet them? How do you cut yourself a little slack when you need it, without lowering your standards?

On finding time for your goals.

It's the first day of school here, and even though it's still pretty warm outside, it's overcast and a little rainy; it FEELS like a school day. I'm channeling my first-day excitement into a new copy of my to-do list, which is less daunting than I'd feared, and plotting out my next steps and my priorities for the next few days.

I talked a little in my last post about my desire to create more structure for my days, especially to carve out more time for reading manuscripts during "the work day." It's a real job hazard of working in publishing that the work-reading can take over all of your leisure time. An editor whom I follow on Twitter posted today that among her plans for her "day off" today was to finish editing a manuscript. Most (acquisition/line) editors do most of their editing at night and on the weekends, so this is not at all unusual, but I was struck by it all over again: editors use their time off to do the work that most people think of as their primary task.

Editors, at least at the bigger houses, spend an incredible amount of time in meetings, and when you add in emails and phonecalls and lunch dates with agents, there really isn't much time left in the day to read or to edit. But I, as an agent, have a lot more, um, agency to set my own work-day agenda. I attend far fewer meetings, and at least most of the time I can schedule my phonecalls for a time of day that's convenient for me and my workflow.

Thinking back on my two hours of reading goal, I'm reminded of a close family member of mine, who upon her retirement a few years back, took up exercise in a big way. She is diligent about it, seven days a week, unless she's got a terrible cold or is traveling, and I think both the exercise itself and the routine make her really happy. We talked about it recently, and she told me, "I have to make it a priority, or it doesn't happen. I start inventing excuses."

This, it strikes me, is true of a lot of things in our lives. I love watching TV, and can easily while away the entire evening that way. But when I spend a lot of time watching TV, I have (deliberately or not) made my TV time my priority. (Remember NBC's slogan, "Must-See TV?" And how many times have you heard the phrase "appointment viewing" or "appointment television" applied to this or that HBO or critically acclaimed drama?)

So even in the face of a to-do list full of a million other tasks, I've decided to make my manuscript reading a priority today.

How about you? How do you carve out time for the things you care about?