I'm out of school for the summer, so aside from two online summer classes, I've had a ton of free time on my hands. At first, this meant a lot of sleeping.
And I do mean A LOT.
But after a week or two of sleeping approximately 18 hours a day (I'm not kidding), I devoted my time to reading and writing. I've written an abnormal amount on my manuscript and I read several books.
(Honorable Mentions: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem by Lauren Oliver and The Siren by Kiera Cass... currently on Panic by Lauren Oliver, to be followed by The Selection by Kiera Cass)
I went on a shopping spree on Kindle (let's hear it for the Amazon Kindle android app!) and downloaded a ton of books that looked even remotely interesting and just started reading. I read each of the Delirium books in a day. I read The Siren in two days (I was lazy with that one).
That's my average reading speed when I'm really into a book. I read the entire Hunger Games series in a matter of three days and that was during senior year of high school. I literally didn't take any notes for three days straight because the fate of Katniss was waaayyyy more important than AP tests.
I read Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis in a day each as well, and that was in like the fourth grade.
This is an around-the-barn way of saying that I read really fast... when I'm interested.
Ahh, there's the hitch.
My reading speed is directly correlated with my interest level in the book I'm reading. If I love it, even if the book is slow or long, I WILL finish it in a day and nothing will stop me.
So here's my problem: When I'm not interested, I become literally the slowest reader in the world.
Right now I'm supposed to be reading a political book for my online class, but it's some of the driest material and it took me an hour to read like four pages. Seriously.
I can read a 700 page novel in a day, but hand me 20 pages of a textbook, and I'll be there for days (and probably give up and never finish). When I have zero interest in something, my reading speed slows way down to practically a crawl.
So right now, I am supposed to be reading 36 pages of writing from a political thinker, and it's taking me forever (hence the blogging to avoid productivity). I literally read a 500 page novel in a day like a week ago.
This applies to writing as well.
Some days, when I have a burst of creativity, I can sit down and write 5,000 words on my manuscript in about two hours. This is pretty average for me when I get inspired. Since summer started, I've been writing 3,000 words about every 2 or 3 days (I don't write everyday). I didn't realize how unusual that was until I shared this with a writer friend and she was stunned.
But hand me a 400 word school assignment, and I'll be here all day.
This might be the most frustrating thing in the world for me. I can understand an assignment perfectly, do all the research, know exactly what I'm going to write, and it will still take me hours to write a two page paper. But that night, I'll write 3,000 words on my manuscript in an hour when I didn't have the slightest clue what I was going to write before I started.
Don't get me wrong: I can B.S. a pretty quality short paper in a small amount of time (thank you timed writings in high school), but that really only works in lower level college classes. In the upper level ones, I have to actually put in a good deal of effort to write a good paper.
I think that is how creativity works. I really think that some people are just born to be writers. Writing creatively comes easily to them. I can sit down, stare at a blank Word document for half an hour, plunk out a crappy sentence, and the next thing I know, I've written 1,000 words. Creativity doesn't follow rules and is often spur of the moment. When the time is right, the words will spill out and it's often difficult to contain it. But a research paper lacks spontaneity. It requires calculation and planning, and when you have a due date, you can't sit around waiting for inspiration.
The same goes for reading. Recreational reading is casual and on the reader's terms. Reading for school is restrictive and often not of a subject of interest to the student.
I wish I could harness my reading/writing speed for school, but alas, I can't.
Although, not blogging when I should be reading Karl Marx might be a start...
KMG
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