By definition, being human and mortal means not having enough time.

Most of us can think of more things to do than we could ever engage in during an average lifespan.

Yet there are periods in my life when I’ve felt extreme anxiety over not having enough time and others when I’ve felt, in contrast, more relaxed about time. As if I’m truly enjoying the time I have despite it being limited.

So what is “enough time”?

Doing What You Don’t Love

I love to read.

But last night something strange happened. As I read a book I’m halfway through and so far don’t particularly love (The Shining Girls—I’ll review later on Goodreads), it hit me.

Reading a book I don’t love and finishing it all the same makes me feel like I have plenty of time.

Before I went to law school I finished almost every novel I ever started, whether I liked it or not. It happened a fair amount because I often picked books at random from library shelves and read them simply because I liked the descriptions.

Since law school, I’ve chosen only books or authors I felt pretty sure I’d like. And if I didn’t after the first 10-20 pages, I stopped reading.

The freedom to read something I don’t love tells me that I am not merely cramming things I enjoy into tiny little pieces of time.

Without A Purpose

Reading nonfiction that doesn’t directly relate to my legal or writing work also makes me feel like I have a lot of time.

Why?

Because it’s reading simply for the sake of learning whether or not it might help my profession. The reality is that kind of reading almost always factors into my writing, teaching, or law practice. In fact, it’s probably much better for all three to read widely.

But back when so many hours of my life were already filled with practicing law and I barely squeezed in writing, I felt I couldn’t justify reading non-fiction simply for the sake of it. If I had free time to read, that sliver went to novels I knew I’d love.

A Few Moments Of Rest

Because I’m still rehabbing from breaking my foot earlier this year I need to take a lot of breaks when I walk.

That led to me sitting in some of Chicago‘s many lovely outdoor plazas and reading—or simply sitting. For the first time since I can remember I feel like I’m truly enjoying the summer, despite that for the first month of it I barely got outside.

The difference is that now once a day I’m truly spending time in the city, not just walking from Point A to Point B as quickly as I can.

Putting It Together

Yes, I love reading, and I also love Chicago. So spending more time on both makes me happier.

But I figured out my feeling of having enough time comes from 3 things.

• Doing (Or Being) 

Allowing myself to read or sit for no reason other than I want or need to do that makes me feel less rushed.

It means I’m taking moments to immerse myself in where I am regardless whether it’s the absolute best use of my time.

The primary purpose isn’t to achieve anything.

It’s to do the thing. To read simply to read. To rest simply to rest.

• Experimenting

Finishing a book I don’t particularly love is an experiment.

I’m letting myself see if by the end I might feel it was worthwhile reading that book. Whether that’s because the ending makes the rest of it resonate more or because I learned something I otherwise wouldn’t have or because I simply stepped into the shoes of a character I don’t especially like.

Likewise, stopping at a plaza because I need to rest means I experience things I didn’t plan.

Yesterday I rested on the outskirts of an ice cream social and heard a band of four guys who sang beautiful harmonies. Another time I discovered a Farmer’s Market I hadn’t known would be there.

• Living 

It’s not as if in the past I ignored the city around me. You can see many photos of Chicago on my Instagram feed.

But mostly those photos were taken as quick shots on my way somewhere or out my window or off my deck from home. I’m not sitting and absorbing the sights and sounds and smells. (A few of those smells aren’t pleasant in the middle of Chicago. But others are—like the cheese and caramel mix from Garrett’s Popcorn or lilacs along an underpass near where I live.)

And rather than sitting only during the five minutes when the weather is perfect, I’m feeling heat and humidity, fog and drizzle.

So for me, apparently, having enough time means the freedom to do things I didn’t plan and that I’m not sure I’ll enjoy.

How about you? What makes you feel like you have enough time?

The post On Finding Enough Time appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

To my left, barely within my peripheral vision, bees buzz angrily inside a beehive.

I hope none of them gets out.

The thought, or really more of a feeling, comes from my gut before my rational mind kicks in. I’m not afraid of a single bee, but a whole hive could pose danger. So it’s normal to have that fear.

Except that there’s no beehive and no bees, only a well-made prop and sound effects. The people on the porch are actors. Their daughters, whose struggles over the next hour to come to terms with their father’s return from prison, break my heart, and they are actors, too.

But for that moment–for a lot of moments–I forgot.

I lived in an imaginary world where everything became real. It reminded me of reading books as a kid. When I focused all my concentration and the world outside fell away.

When someone speaking to me or touching my arm in the real world could barely reach me, and when it did I blinked as if coming out of a dream.

It’s the effect every writer, actor, director, and artist strives for.

It’s why I read books and watch movies and see plays. To live other lives as if they were real.

Especially now when so much of my life is writing, it’s rare that I can turn off my writer brain. It keeps asking things like How did the writer do that? Did that work for me? Do I believe that character would say that line that way?

So I’m grateful to director Jess Hutchinson, playwright Emily Dendinger, and the entire cast and crew of No Home For Bees, as well as to 20% Theatre Company, for that evening when I lived other lives in another place.

What amazes me further is No Home For Bees was a workshop production. It was produced to get feedback from audience members and give the creators a chance to present the work in a space beyond a reading but before a more formal run.

And it was magic. If I hadn’t seen it on its last weekend, I would have returned at least once if not twice so I could try to figure out how they did it.

As it was, I simply enjoyed the real bees.

The post Real Bees In An Imaginary Garden appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Not only have I never experienced a supernatural pregnancy (surprise, right?) as does Tara, the main character in The Awakening Series, I’ve never been pregnant at all. I’ve also never dated a vampire (When Darkness Falls), and unlike Q.C. (Quille) Davis, I don’t investigate crimes and no one I love has been murdered.

(I did work in the tower formerly known as Sears, but nothing occult happened there. That I know of.)

Yet as I walked today through Printers Row, the neighborhood where Quille, the protagonist of my new suspense series, and I live, I realized that the fiction I choose to write reflects a lot about what’s going on with me.

Not so much what I’m doing but how I feel about it.

Travel To Far Off Places

I wrote The Awakening Series during the years I was a full-time practicing lawyer, typically clocking 50-65 hours a week. People often asked me why I wasn’t writing legal thrillers.

Seriously? No. No more law.

I wrote not to spend more time in the legal world but to escape.

Tara and other important characters in the series travel to Armenia (including its capital, Yerevan, and its more rural areas); Florence, Italy (to search for an ancient letter); to Istanbul, Turkey (almost getting killed there and meeting a billionaire benefactor and a Sufi elder); Paris, France; and all over the United States. (You can sees some photos of these places on my Pinterest page.)

Why?

Partly because it’s a thriller series and a convention of the genre is taking readers to different parts of the world.

But it’s also because while I enjoyed aspects of my law practice, I also associated it with too much work and a lot of stress. I wrote to get away from it.

Chicago Scenes In Fiction And Life

I love Chicago. I always have.

Now that I write mainly from home and so much of my workday involves writing fiction, I’m able to really relax and enjoy the city I live in. I take more walks (also part of my physical therapy since I broke my foot). I study and immerse myself in the city in ways I just didn’t have time for when I was spending all my hours in offices, conference rooms, airplanes, and courtrooms.

Through my new hero, Q.C. Davis, I’m able to share all of this with readers.

Maybe It’s OK To Be A Lawyer

Now that my real life law practice is limited (often to less than a few hours a week), I don’t mind writing about being a lawyer, which is why that’s Quille’s main profession. I enjoy drawing on parts of what I learned as a lawyer and what I’ve picked up from other lawyers I know.

Motives for suspects in The Worried Man include real estate and insurance fraud, areas I learned a lot about as a litigator.

The Charming Man touches on immigration and criminal law. And Quille uses skills I learned in interviewing and deposing both friendly and hostile witnesses and gathering information that I picked up over the decades I’ve worked in law.

That’s not to say that Quille is just like me.

She’s not. For one thing, she began working as a child stage actress at age eight and did so through college. That’s a bit of wish fulfillment on my part. I took a lot of summer theater classes and got parts in high school plays and musicals, but I never acted professionally.

Quille also gets to say a lot of things that I only think.

While I like to think we share a desire to treat people well, Quille is far more comfortable with confrontation than I am. I admire that about her.

I also think it’s pretty cool that she solves crimes.

What sorts of books might I write if/when the Q.C. Davis series runs it’s course?

Who knows, but I’ll be excited to find out.

The post Fiction And Life appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved libraries. At five years old, I got my pinkish orange children’s card at the Brookfield Public Library. I was so excited at the idea of this giant (as it appeared to me then) room full of books. My mom set a limit of five at a time, probably the most she figured I could carry home or possibly keep track of. It was not cheap to pay for lost library books.

The Winter Garden at the Harold Washington Public Library

Back then, the Brookfield library had two levels. You walked up concrete steps outside into the main library, then down carpeted stairs to the basement children’s library. I loved the children’s librarian and talked with her every time I went in. The first time I returned books I thought I should put them back where I’d found them, so I dutifully reshelved them. Mrs. Peters explained that they needed to be checked back in. (I like to think she was pleased that I had placed them on the correct shelves.) You got your white adult card when you turned twelve. Graduating to the main library floor was both exciting and sad. I’d visited the children’s library once or twice a week all throughout grade school. In sixth grade, I’d moved on to the young adult books shelves, which were still in the basement. I suspect many of those now would be considered middle grade books, because the subject matters were fairly tame. Much of what was truly young adult literature was classified as adult literature at the time, including Judy Bloom’s novel Forever. (It was controversial because it showed an eighteen-year-old woman having sex for the first time without suffering negative consequences. Books where teenagers got pregnant and had to go away somewhere and have the baby in secret were allowed on the young adult shelves.) In the main library, I discovered my first Mary Higgins Clark novel on the paperback racks. That in itself was new to me, because all the children’s books were in hard cover.

About six or seven years later, the library was torn down. A new one, all on one level and wheelchair accessible, was built. The projected cost of putting in the elevators and ramps had almost matched building anew, which is why the original library wasn’t preserved. The new one was clean and modern, but I missed the old worn carpets and the feeling of descending into an enchanted world when going down the narrow stairs to the basement. The new children’s section, where I occasionally checked out old favorites, was just another room, which was made even clearer when Mrs. Peters retired. Still, in my mid-twenties, one of the more difficult times in my life, I visited the library often. I had been working at temp and secretarial jobs, as I was a good typist, and writing fiction and playing guitar on the side. I developed a repetitive stress injury in my wrists and hands. The surgical options were not good. I stopped working and moved back in with my parents, feeling like a failure. Bouncing back to mom and dad was fairly unusual at that time, unlike now. In the evenings, I paged through career books in the library searching for something else I was qualified to do that didn’t require a lot of keyboarding and that called for a bachelors degree in Writing/English. (Eventually, I attended a graduate program to earn a paralegal certificate. That later led to my becoming a lawyer.)

During that same decade, I lived on and off in another near west suburb that had a beautiful old library overlooking the Des Plaines river. Its enclosed three-season porch became my favorite place to read in the summer and spring. In the winter and fall, I researched at library carrels in front of leaded glass windows overlooking the river. I discovered some new favorite authors as I wandered the stacks. Since most of the books were hardcover library editions, I pulled them based solely on title. It is there I found my first Sara Paretsky book about female private eye V.I. Warshawski. I’ve read every one since. (For why, see Why I Love VI.)

Right before I started law school, I moved to downtown Chicago. For four years, I worked full time while attending school at night. I had little chance to read fiction, but I visited the Harold Washington Public Library once or twice for research. I found it cavernous and without warmth. Built from 1988 through 1991 and designed by architect Thomas Beeby, the Harold Washington is the largest public library in the world. It houses over six million books plus historical collections of Chicago artifacts. Its top floor is the Winter Garden, with a skylight and lots of marble. For all that, I’ve never loved the library as a whole. Its double high ceilings and sprawling undivided floors make the number of books look skimpy, and I’ve yet to find a cozy place to read. On most floors, the lighting is harsh, and there are long library tables with wooden chairs, but no arm chairs or couches.

Partly because of that, even after finishing law school, I rarely went there. I worked so many hours that the few times I borrowed books, I returned them late because it was hard to find time to walk the eight blocks there and back. And I didn’t always finish the books. I actually read much faster than I had before law school, but in a good week I’d have 10-15 minutes to read at night before I went to sleep. At the same time, I suddenly could afford to buy the books I wanted. Some new lawyers at large firms drastically increase their spending on clothes or cars or buy larger homes. I bought books.

That trend mostly continued when I started my own law firm. Though I went on my own to have more time to write, I quickly became nearly as busy as I had been when I was employed at Sonneschein (now Dentons US LLP). I enjoyed my practice more, because I liked running my own business and having a wider variety of responsibilities. How busy I was had more ups and downs, though. Which meant that while I had a little more time to read, that time was less predictable. I might have one or two weeks when I would get home from the office by 6 p.m. each night, so I read for twenty minutes or or so after I finished my evening’s fiction writing. There were other months when I more or less lived at my office. The receptionist used to joke that she was sure I had a cot under my desk. So my visits to the public library were still few and far between.

Then, last spring, after spending about two years gradually slowing down my law practice, I flipped my work life so that I now focus about three-quarters of my work week on writing and one-quarter on law, with lots of what I’d call writing adjacent activities, such as reading, in my free time. (I also now actually cook and eat at home fairly often rather than eating out or at my office, which has felt very nice.) So recently it occurred to me that I had time to go to the library. I remembered the Harold Washington as rather cold, too big, and not inviting. No doubt, all those things are still true, as it has not been significantly remodeled. Yet, as I rode up the escalator for the second time in two weeks, the smell of paper and aging book covers made me feel like I had come home. The rows of stacks once again offered worlds of possibility. I’d forgotten how much I loved meandering shelves perusing different titles. Now I can try authors I’ve never read before, because my reading isn’t limited to fifteen minutes snatches in between other work. Instead, I can read uninterrupted for an hour or more sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea or a glass of Pinot Noir.

No doubt my next visit to the library and the next after that will seem less novel and amazing, and eventually it will be routine. And that in itself is wonderful. In this country more books than any one person could read in a lifetime are available for free. And while libraries have expanded to provide access to the Internet, ebooks, and numerous other services, those rows of books remain, for me, a huge part of what magic and joy are all about.
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It seems like some subjects, genres, or aspects of writing should make the distinction easy to draw, but I suspect other not so obvious factors are at work. For example, last month my women’s book group read a book I normally would never have picked up. It’s a coming of age novel told by a first person narrator. The story, to the extent there is one, revolves around sexual tastes and practices the general public considers unusual. The dialogue struck me as preposterous, and the narrative includes annoying catch phrases and repetition. All my critiques makes this sounds like a book in one of those genres that’s most often labeled trash, such as erotica or romance. Fifty Shades of Grey, perhaps. But no, what I read was In One Person by John Irving. After the book was released in 2012, Time magazine called Irving a “literary legend.”

For those not that familiar with the two novels, Fifty Shades was initially self-published as an e-book in 2011. It is about a young woman who is a virgin. Her first sexual relationship is with a man whose proclivities include bondage and discipline. In One Person was traditionally published. Written as if it were a memoir of a man in his sixties or seventies, it focuses on the narrator’s first sexual relationship, which is with a transsexual (this is the word the author uses), as well as his many subsequent sexual experiences as he matures. I did not like either book. After the first chapter, I skimmed both. The critiques I listed above I had about both books. Yet E.L. James (the pen name of the Fifty Shades author) is generally considered a writer of trash and John Irving is lauded as a literary giant.

Here are my ideas about why:

Emotional Distance or Closeness: One reason I don’t like many literary novels is that, as with Irving’s book, I often feel disconnected from the characters. While I didn’t love Fifty Shades, I had no doubt how narrator Anastasia felt about her love interest, her life, her sex life, her friends, etc. I had empathy for her. In contrast, I never quite feel what Irving’s main character, whose name I’ve forgotten, feels. His sex scenes are detailed to say the least—I’ve never read or heard anything that included so many uses of words for male and female anatomy—but, to me, not compelling. They are told with a tone of irony and detached observation. Most novels I was required to read in high school and college had that type of distance between the author’s voice and the characters. Most were written using an omniscient narrator. In that style, the narrator knows all about everything, sometimes even intruding and commenting on the plot or the characters’ choices, but stays a bit removed and above it all. Current fiction tends to set the reader right in the characters’ hearts and minds. I think this has led to associating “literature” with distance and popular fiction (which for some equals “trash”) with emotional connection. Though certainly there are literary writers, such as Dorothy Allison, whose work I find almost too hard to read due to the depth of the characters’ emotions.

Guilt/Entertainment: Many people feel guilty about enjoying reading. If a book is fun and they can’t put it down, they believe it must not have literary merit. On the other hand, if most people groan when they hear the title and say, “Ugh, yeah, I had to read that in school,” or if at the very least it takes effort and planning to get yourself to sit on the couch and open it, then a novel must be good, it must be literary. So a fast read like a Jonathan Kellerman or a Mary Higgins Clark is trash, and a novel that plods along where you don’t care one way or another about the characters must be literary. Again, I think this is a holdover from high school and college.

What the Book is About: I don’t mean the subject of the main storyline. In One Person and Fifty Shades of Grey are both about sexual awakening and experiences. But the former also explores sociological and political questions such as how the main character’s family responds to him and his orientation, what role heredity and environment may or may not play in sexuality, and how society treated and treats people who are bisexual. In contrast, for the most part, Fifty Shades focuses on the personal relationship between Anastasia and her love interest and leaves larger questions about society untouched. This is not to say that a reader couldn’t extrapolate from Anastasia’s experiences and feelings to a larger theme, but, to me at least, that isn’t in the text of the book. (Perhaps this is why I saw Irving’s book referred to as “literary porn,” while Fifty Shades is often called “mommy porn.”) This criteria is one that, for me, often divides what I think of as pure of-the-moment entertainment versus a book that makes me keep thinking about it long after I’ve finished. But I’ve felt this way about both books that are considered literary and those that are considered genre or mainstream fiction, such as certain Stephen King novels, my favorite being The Dead Zone.

The Education Needed to Read And Understand the Book: By education, I don’t mean level in school, but the breadth of knowledge a person needs to understand the book. I suspect this is a principal reason Shakespeare was considered entertainment for the masses when originally performed and is now considered literary. For most of us, enjoying Shakespeare’s plays takes a certain amount of knowledge of the times in which they were written and the changes in the language since then. That can be gained through reading an annotated text or joining literature classes or discussion groups, but it takes more effort than, say, a detective novel. So readers of Shakespeare and similar books may see themselves as smarter, more educated, and more like serious readers even if they only read a few books a year, while I tend to think of serious readers as those who love to read book after book after book.

The Gender of the Author and the Main Character: Look at any overall list of best literary fiction and you’ll find it dominated by men, and white men at that. This is starting to change, so now you’ll find women writers and writers of color included in literary book lists for recent years. All the same, being male helps if you want to be considered a serious author. Something else I’ve noticed is that a coming of age book about a young woman is generally considered a genre or young adult book (think Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, or anything else by Judy Blume if you’re my age or the Hunger Games or Divergent novels), and thus, to some people, a lesser sort of book—a sentiment with which I disagree. A coming of age book about a young man, however, is often considered literary. Think about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye. There are exceptions; for instance, I found To Kill a Mockingbird on one list of literary coming of age novels (along with 9 books about boys/men). Likewise, when women write about sexual or romantic love, by and large it is considered trash—think of the view of most everyone you know about romance or “women’s” novels. When men write about sexual exploits, though, it is literary. Ask Vladimir Nabokov and John Irving.

The Track Record of the Author: This is the one that probably applies most directly to the two books I’ve been comparing. Fifty Shades of Grey began as fan fiction (fiction where the writer adopts characters of an already existing book, movie, or television show) based on the Twilight series. The author was an unknown in the fiction world. Only after she self-published it as an e-book and it became wildly popular did a traditional publisher take it on. John Irving, in contrast, had twelve novels published before In One Person, for the most part to critical acclaim. Based on his pedigree, I assumed when reading In One Person that Irving deliberately chose for stylistic reasons to have the narrator retell various anecdotes and refer to his uncle and other characters a gazillion times by nicknames such as “The Racket Man.” (Or “racquetman,” I’m not sure, as I listened rather than read and didn’t care enough about any of the characters to track it down or figure it out from context.) On the other hand, knowing the history of Fifty Shades of Grey, I assumed that when the entire contract between the narrator and her love interest was included word-for-word more than once, it was because the story initially had been told in serial fashion, so the author had repeated it for readers who hadn’t started at the beginning, then not thought to edit it out when transforming the work into one complete novel. Similarly, I ascribed catch phrases that made me cringe to inexperienced writing. In short, while I didn’t like either writing style, I concluded Irving was trying to achieve an effect that just didn’t work for me, while E.L. James’ novel needed another round or two of rewriting or editing. Accurate in either case? Maybe, maybe not.

As for my own writing, as in reading fiction, plot matters to me most, then character, then the writing style, but I strive for all three to be as strong as possible. And I don’t consider anything I read “trash,” just a book or style or subject that’s not for me. What about you? Do read—or write—anything you would call trash? If so, what does that mean to you?

The post Are Books Written by Women More Likely to be Labeled “Trash”? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Some of the varying reactions, I suspect, arise from differences in why people choose to read and what they hope to gain from the experience. Here are a few of the motives and goals I’ve observed:

To Decode The Text:  I have a running dispute with one of the lawyer book group participants about what is and isn’t good writing. In one novel (literary–not mystery or suspense), she said she reread a scene three times to figure out the identity of a character referred to only by the pronoun “she.” My book group companion felt a sense of accomplishment upon determining that “she” meant the main character’s mother. To me, it’s just plain bad writing if it takes multiple readings to know who is in the room in a particular scene. But to others, including many critics, a book that requires the reader to parse out phrases, reexamine passages, and devise for herself what actually happened on the page is more interesting and engaging than one that sweeps the reader into a clear narrative with characters that, as written and without in-depth fill-in-the-blanks by the reader, are well-developed.

To Go Along For The Ride:  I read for plot and character. This means that, for the most part, I both read and write genre fiction. My favorite books are ones that tell a compelling story and offer a significant theme or help me learn more about some part of the world or history or culture. But to get to the learning part, I first want a story and a character (or characters) who grab me on page one. This is partly because my law career involves reading convoluted case law and, often, insurance policies (yes, it’s an exciting practice), so when I read for pleasure, I don’t want to struggle. I want to escape. Suspense, thrillers, horror, mystery–all the genres I love tend to grab the reader on page one and pull her or him into the world of the story immediately. On the other hand, I tend to avoid fantasy and to a lesser extent, science fiction, because I become impatient with the time many sci fi and fantasy authors spend building the new worlds before getting to the story. Which is a bit ironic given that my Awakening series generally does well with science fiction readers, though it’s not strictly sci fi. But I get to the story on page one, and I did a great deal of editing with the aim of folding in the background information the reader needs without slowing the story.

To Learn Through The Book:  People loved The Da Vinci Code because it was a page turner, but also because, while racing through the plot, they learned a lot about aspects of Christianity and Catholicism that were unfamiliar to them. The book addressed how the role of women in the Christian movement was obscured and diminished as it became a more organized religion. (Interesting side note–the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, a non-fiction book which the authors asserted had a central theme that The Da Vinci Code drew from, sued the publisher of the novel. They were not successful.) Brown is particularly good at weaving background information into the plot without the reader feeling like she’s sitting in a lecture, despite that sometimes his main character Professor Langdon literally gives lectures. In auditoriums. I appreciate an author who can do that well. For many years, James Michener was popular in part because a reader could learn so much about history by reading his novels. I could never get through one, though, as I wanted the story to start sooner than page 100 (see above, To Go Along For The Ride).

To Learn Because Of The Book:  When the lawyer book group read The Three Musketeers, the book group member I mentioned above pulled out atlases, a French dictionary, and Google to understand where exactly the events took place and additional details about the historical and geographic context. She loves books that are enhanced by outside research, and I admire her for that. I’ve become a rather lazy reader and am inclined to move forward and pick up what I can from the context of the novel without doing anything extra. If I’m particularly interested, I might research when I’m finished. For instance, I read a suspense novel by Alexandra Sokoloff, The Unseen, that incorporated certain types of ESP cards and testing. I had read a non-fiction book about that as a teenager, so I did some research on the Internet to find out how much of what was in the novel was historical fact. I also sometimes research later to find the factual underpinnings of a book for my own education as a writer. Now that I’m writing full time and practicing law only part-time, I plan to do that more often, both for fun and to analyze other authors’ efforts.

To Find Kindred Spirits:  I recently read a scathing comment by a literary critic about readers who prefer likeable characters. The critic said it was a sad thing if a person needed to find friends in books. I disagree (no doubt because I find friends in books). There are characters I return to again and again because I admire them and enjoy their company. While as readers, we know the characters and events in novels aren’t “real” in the sense of being alive and breathing, if they speak to us, we feel that the author, at least, understood something about who we are and how life appears to us. We’ve all had times when it seems as if we’re the only person in the world who has felt a certain way or been through a difficult experience. Sometimes, through books, we can discover that at least someone else has been there, too. Also, there are times we can’t sort out our feelings, and stepping into the shoes of a character who is in the same position can help us do that. After my parents’ deaths were caused by a drunk driver, I often felt too angry and overwhelmed to talk with others. Reading offered me a safe place to explore my feelings and deal with pain.

To Better Understand Others:  A book with well-developed characters–ones whose motives, feelings, and previous life experience are explored–allows the reader to step into someone else’s shoes for a little while or, more accurately, into someone else’s mind and heart. I love when I feel that, in reading, I almost become someone else temporarily, and see through that person’s eyes. I can only meet so many people in life, and most of them will never share their inmost feelings with me. In a novel, I see things from other perspectives and get glimpses into how the world looks to someone other than me. When you think about it, this is really the basis of nearly all advocacy, whether it’s legal or political or otherwise. There’s a reason politicians use anecdotes about welfare queens or Joe the Plumber–story resonates in a way that facts and figures do not.

To Be Inspired:  Both fiction and non-fiction offer a chance to live through or follow people we admire. One of my favorite fictional characters is female private eye V.I. Warshawski (for more on this, see Why I Love V.I.). I admire her determination, courage, and loyalty. She inspired me to leave the large firm where I worked and start my own law practice because I so enjoyed seeing how she worked for herself and ran her business. (I did not want to get hit on the head or be near death quite as often as V.I., so I opted not to become a private detective.) Reading about people and characters I admire is a big part of why I love novels, and why I’m not a fan of books that are mainly about people who struggle through the entire book and fail entirely or who are the types of people I’d avoid in real life.

To Impose Order On The Universe:  For a similar reason, I like horror, suspense, and thrillers because, usually, the protagonist prevails in the end. The victory may not be complete, but there is generally some sort of justice and a semblance of order is restored in the universe. This appeals to me precisely because I already know life is hard and terrible things happen. I can read that in the news every day. In fiction, I want there to be order and a progression toward a goal, however rocky the path. In that sense, I am very much a devotee of Ayn Rand’s view of fiction–that it should depict humans as they might be and ought to be. I want a book to have a hero.

To Feel Less Alone:  My love for heroes and order sometimes puts me at odds with those who prefer books about significantly dysfunctional people or families. What appeals to me as imposing order on a chaotic universe strikes other readers as too pollyannaish (I checked, that’s a word). In the way that someone bubbling over with cheer at five a.m. is obnoxious to the non-morning person who got up early solely to catch a flight, the resolution and order I seek, that makes me feel less adrift in the universe, can grate on those who prefer more realism in fiction. Conversely, books that leave me ready to slit my wrists can comfort someone else. Both types of book can make the reader feel less alone, but which book does that for a particular reader can vary widely.

To Explore Issues:  There’s a reason preachers often speak in parables. As I noted above, storytelling can provide an engaging vehicle for exploring social issues or advocating causes. If it’s done well, without preaching, it can change minds. My own views on gun control modified slightly after reading many of Dean Koontz’s books. It’s not that I thought I’d ever be in the situations that his protagonists face. But his often-used premise of the individual against the worst elements of government illustrated for me why many people fear a world where only the police and authorities can access guns, as there’s no doubt that authority can be abused and that many governments oppress people. Some of Koontz’s books are a bit heavy handed for me, and I’ll probably never become an NRA member. But his narratives provided a perspective I otherwise lacked. Likewise, being a United States city dweller, reading stories set in other parts of the U.S. and in other countries helps me see why there are such vast political divisions over many issues. It’s hard to understand a completely different political mindset while knowing next to nothing about the day-to-day life of anyone who holds it. Fiction and creative non-fiction can help remedy that.

To Escape:  I read about a study years ago that said that people who read fiction in hospital waiting rooms are less stressed and more able to cope with their reason for being there than those who read non-fiction or don’t read at all. No matter what types of novels a person reads, fiction offers an escape. It’s a chance to step away from day-to-day life and be absorbed in another place and time.

To Connect With Other People:  As my membership in two book groups shows, not only do many people love to read, they love to attend book groups. Books offer a chance to connect to one another, whether it’s over sharing a love of the same book or character or to conduct a passionate debate about the merits or demerits of a work. Throwing in a glass or two of wine and/or a good dinner adds to the fun and the ambience. Regardless of disagreements, the shared love of fiction brings people together.

What pulls all of these reasons–and I’m sure I missed many–together for me is that while we may read for different reasons, fiction fulfills deep human needs. No wonder we sometimes passionately defend or advocate for our book choices.

What about you? Why do you read, and what differences have you noticed in your likes and dislikes versus those of your fellow and sister readers?

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Lisa M. Lilly is the author of the occult thrillers The Awakening and The Unbelievers, Books 1 and 2 in the Awakening series. A short film of the title story of her collection The Tower Formerly Known as Sears and Two Other Tales of Urban Horror was recently produced under the title Willis Tower. If you’d like to be notified of new releases and read reviews on M.O.S.T. (Mystery, Occult, Suspense, Thriller), click here to join her email list. 

The post Why Do The Books We Love (Or Hate) Matter So Much To Us? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

That experience illustrates two important facets of persuading people. One is well-known to most lawyers — that of putting your best argument first. If your first argument is weak, your reader or listener may never get beyond it. The second is credibility. Because I checked the source material and found it didn’t say what the article’s author claimed it did, I no longer found that author, or the publication, credible. Both lost the opportunity to persuade me not only of that one point, but of anything.

These principles apply to fiction, too. Novelists all are attempting to persuade readers. To do what? To believe in the fictional world the author created and to care about the characters as if they were real people. That’s a big part of what’s happening, or not, when customers in a bookstore or on-line read the first paragraph or two of a book. That first page either pulls the reader in or it doesn’t. While a lot of authors feel frustrated that potential buyers judge a book by reading no more than the first page (assuming they’ve liked the cover in the first place), most of us do exactly that when we browse books. That’s why I rewrite the first page of my novels close to a hundred times before publication.

Credibility also matters. This morning I revised a scene where a woman exits the River City high rise complex and hurries through Chicago’s South Loop after dark. A stranger starts to follow her. What I want the reader to wonder at that point is “Who is the stranger? What does he want? Will Sophia reach her office safely?” But if I’d said she was walking through Lincoln Park instead, someone who knows Chicago’s neighborhoods well would forget about the story and wonder: “Isn’t River City in the South Loop? Does this author know Chicago at all? Doesn’t she check Google maps?” With that one error, my reader is no longer persuaded that the scene or the character is real. If I’ve otherwise done a good job, the reader might forgive me and read on. But if too many errors break the narrative, it becomes more likely the reader won’t return to the book.

So there you have it – sin, sex, and persuasive writing. And you thought it was just a catchy title.

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Visit Lisa’s website:  www.lisalilly.com

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