I commit to reading for 60 minutes every day. I already do this (probably way more) but in these particular 60 minutes, I will read with a keen eye towards dissecting the author's craft. Today, for example, I continued reading a book that my sister recommended to me, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. American Dirt is the gut-wrenching story of a mother and son trying to flee Mexico after a drug lord murdered 16 members of their family (I'm not giving anything away as the story opens with this scene).
In reading today, I paid very close attention to how Cummins worked with back story, flashbacks, and the narrative tense. She weaves time together seamlessly and in my writing, I have found that such weaving is a great struggle.
I also started to keep a notebook of new words I'm learning because Wordle reminds me every day that my vocabulary is deficient. I mean, how did I only just learn what droll means?
Here was the most amazing line of today's reading...actually, two!
"Lydia funnels gratitude into the slow blink of her lashes." (p. 152)
"She could do anything back then, before she had the maternal fear to spark any real caution in her soul." (p. 154)
Dang.
Goals.
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