Keeping the Dreaded Slumpies at Bay

I wrote a few posts back about my reading slumps and what they mean for me and how I have tried in the past to interrupt them. I've been climbing out of the latest slump slowly, settling back into reading as a thing that feels right little pieces at a time. I'm still abandoning more books than I would like, still setting things aside for no other reason than that I wake up feeling like I want to start something new. But that impulse is waning, and my desire to stick with reads is increasing (it helps to have books at hand that one desperately wants to read). I've been thinking lately about what causes the slumps in the first place, and what little tricks I can employ to avoid letting them set in. So I bring you my Pretty Good Guide to Keeping the Dreaded Slumpies at Bay.

Reduce Choice

When I have a huge pile of books I want to read soon (or even someday), I get overwhelmed by all that choice and have a terrible time not only keeping with a book through any minor draggy parts but also in choosing what book to read in the first place. For years I have kept a literal, physical TBR shelf somewhere in the house, a spot where I pile new books that come into the house and any older books that had come back to my attention and that I wanted to remember about for reading soon. Recently I have gotten rid of this shelf, incorporating all of the books that used to reside there into my regular shelves. This may seem counterintuitive (haven’t I increased the books I’m choosing among, by eliminating the TBR, by eliminating the smaller shelf of books to choose from?), but thus far I have found it incredibly liberating not to have that TBR staring at me. It’s as if someone was breathing down my neck before, and now they’ve buggered off to a different room. I still have a list of my TBRs as part of my catalogue on LibraryThing, so if I absolutely must know what books I’ve got that I thought I should read “soon,” I’m not out of luck.

Commit to Committing

I sometimes haul a huge pile of books over to my reading chair and sit down to read the first five or ten pages of each, intending to carry on with whichever one best catches my attention. This practice fits well with my overall method of choosing reads, which is to select something that grabs me in the moment, that suits my mood and my interest at the time. But what usually happens in this situation is that I end up reading five or six books at once (and often not finishing even one of them). I’m not against reading more than one book at a time (I almost always am, even when there’s no slump in sight) but I do much better if I can commit to two (or three if you count audio books, of which I always have one going). But if I’m going to read the opening of several books in order to choose one to read, I’ve got to force myself to commit to one of them, instead of trying to carry on with them all.

Make Decisions

I have a bad habit of quitting books for reasons that have to do with other books, not the book I’m actually quitting. That is, I tend to just wander away from reads because something else grabs my attention. Now, I have no problem DNFing any book that I’m actively not enjoying. And sometimes walking away from a book in favor of another one is a solid sign that the first book wasn’t for you. But most often when I quit a book in favor of another book, it’s just that I’ve been distracted by something shiny. Actively deciding to quit a book for real reasons makes my reading life better and, of course, goes hand-in-hand with committing to my currents reads.

Banish FOMO

Ah, FOMO, how I hate you. How you rob me of peace. How you keep me on the internet so much longer than any human person should ever be. How you convince me to buy books I know I won’t get to for years, if ever. How you entice me to buy things now because “they might not be available the next time I go looking for them.” (What weird dystopian world is my brain living in where most new books suddenly disappear from all stores and the entirety of the internet within a few weeks of coming out?) Of all the things I can do to help myself stick with reads, this is probably the one that is the most difficult. Avoiding that fear of missing out requires that I separate the excitement over a new book from the fear that I will miss all the new books that would be most exciting. That’s a tough ask, one that involves staring down the fact that I will never be able to read everything I want to, that I will never be able to keep up with what’s coming out, take a deep breath and be okay with it. I ask you? How?