Tuesday 11 December 2018

Deep. Dive. Into. What.

Problem Statement:  Going on vacation and have decided to be screen free for a week. This includes no kindle or iPad.

Acknowledgement: This is not a real problem.

My sister: Calls non-problems like these champagne problems.

Justification of Pressure: If pick a dud, will not be able to download something else.

Opinions: Brought this up with fellow writer yesterday who said: "I went screen-free for three weeks last summer and it was wonderful. I spent six months curating the most interesting list of..."

Oh: Leaving shortly and so far curation strategy has been wandering from bookshelf to bookshelf to see if there are any books lying around that I haven't read and that don't weigh a lot.

Roasted: "That isn't going to work," said fellow writer. "You need to take a deep dive."

Problem Statement #2 (Acknowledgment implied):  Deep Dive Into What.

Crime Books Would be Perfect for this But: If I'm going to deep dive into anything, it really should be non-fiction because I got to keep my head in the game (first draft of new book due Jan 15).

Also: Crime books weigh a ton.

Other Things That Swirled Around in My Head: Am listening to James Patterson Masterclass where he says that it's interesting to combine things from all different parts of your life and that's how you come up with the best plots. Before that, I listened to Malcolm Gladwell who says that Janet Malcolm is a writer's writer and that she takes deep dives into her topics and that he never understood why she is not a huge commercial success.

Doing the Math: James Patterson's advice to combine a bunch of thoughts (Fellow Writer's suggestion to deep dive + Malcolm Gladwell's recommendation for an author that deep dives) - Crime/Suspense/Thrillers = Problem Solved.

In Case You're Confused: Which means between inter-library loan and amazon I now have six books by Janet Malcolm in my hot little hands.

Also: Deep diving on vacation can mean different things to different people.