Are you stuck? Not necessarily stuck in a workday, career manner, there are plenty of career books written and hawked that guarantee you will find your dream job after buying a dozen books and signing up for that $30,000 a week Personal Potential Seminar. Rather, are you stuck because you need a new, interesting hobby, a new travel destination, a new platform to launch a new you? As a writer, you know that answers to deep questions can always be found between the pages of a new book. A just released, hardback, straight from an Indie store, book.
You can only find these wondrous containers of truth and wit if you troop to the largest bookstore, you can comfortably drive to, the bigger the better, and no, Costco doesn’t count.
Yes, I did consider a library for this activity, but this life-changing process requires the latest books all the latest how-to books, new criticisms, and recently released novels. You want to be influenced by the very newest trends.
Before we launch into the process (one that is so good my husband has repeated it to dinner guests as his idea) a bit of about the origin of this theory.
I was treating myself for my birthday with a trip to the bookstore and a 100 dollar bill.
I gave myself permission to choose and buy whatever caught my eye. Now that sounds reasonable, but have you objectively observed just how you manage endless shelves of delectable books? You save time. You visit the mystery section because you will not be disappointed. You skip the cooking section because you have no idea what language those are written in. And just like in college, you avoid the engineering shelves (even as a campus tour guide, I never stepped foot in Engineering 1, nor Engineering 2) completely. We walk into bookstores already carrying our heavy unconscious biases and fall back to choosing what we already know and love, like that revisionist history of the Alcott sisters.
For this birthday, I wanted to find something new, I was searching for inspiration. I wandered all the aisles, even the books on how to code. What caught my eye was an end cap to the psychology aisle featuring a new paperback by Eric Maisel, Creativity for Life. I opened the book and while still standing in front of the end cap, began reading the story of a writer who pivoted from penning short stories to branching out and applying his creativity to other spheres, in his case, starting a men’s drumming group and expanding his reach by training to be a professional Creativity Coach.
I held the book open, frozen in the aisle, thunderstruck. You can do that? A person can be a creativity coach? I did not know that was job. That was never on offer during Career Day. That story in that book altered the trajectory of my career and changed my life.
(Note, I was drawn in by the story of the man who made the change in his life, stories are very powerful).
It works, which is why I’m sharing it with you.
Here’s what to do.
Return to a favorite bookstore or find that new store nearby. You want a store packed with books you’ve never bothered to look at.
Walk up and down every aisle. What do you see? What catches your eye? Like choosing a bottle of wine minutes before you’re due at the party, feel free to choose a book based on its attractive cover art.
Go ahead and pull out the book your hand hovered over but your first thought was, no, not that, that’s not my field, I’ve never crocheted a day in my life. Take it anyway. The cover was compelling enough, it deserves a second look.
Gather about ten books.
Place your catch on a handy table, or if you must, find an out-of-the-way spot (like the coding aisle) and review your finds. This is why Costco won’t work, although you could sit on one of the lawn chairs, but I think that would be a bit awkward. In a bookstore, people routinely review books.)
Why do you like these covers?
Can you find or see new ideas in the books?
Read the back cover and the inside flap. Can you quickly find a common theme among your choices?
Did you choose three books on gardening and the annotated version of A Secret Garden?
Did you inadvertently pull down three books on feminism and a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale?
Did you pull out bios of current politicians or ones about 19th-century explorers?
Did you remember to run your hand over the travel books?
Were you curious about illustrated books? LGBTQ lives?
Did you find fashion icon books, suddenly thinking that yes, you would welcome relationship advice from Olivia Rodrigo? Did you choose a Taylor Swift Calendar?
You don’t need to act on any of these titles this minute. But do pay attention. Line up your books side by side. What do the Greek Isles, Swift, and knitting have in common? Do the subjects stand in stark contrast to who you are and what you’ve always done? Maybe you aren’t called to knit or crochet but do need to find an art that involves hand work.
Maybe you aren’t or will ever be a Swiftie, but you may want to consider attending a live concert for a change of pace. And if you’ve been overlanding and checking off a National Park frequent visitor card, perhaps it’s time to board a plane.
Another method to find meaning is to juxtapose the book choices. What does a biography of George Elliot and the top ten sights in Egypt have in common? How does the science book with the compelling cover (the only reason I would choose it) relate to poetry? What is the new idea? Is there a new idea?
Photograph your books all together, messy or organized. You may want to take one or two books home, but you don’t necessarily have to (I would, as a thank you to the bookstore for, basically, still existing).
You may not even know why this new book needs to be read, which is even more intriguing. Read it. Welcome the unknown. I own books I still don’t have a good excuse for buying, but I know I’ll need them for some article or a sudden ability to link contemporary Irish poetry with 17th-century painting.
When you read these new books, I give you permission to skim. Search for the stories, and look for the inspiration. Be prepared to admit you were wrong. I often pick up a thick history book promising I’ll just skim it for general information only to get deeply involved in, say, the history of cross-continental train travel. I don’t even care that much about trains, what am I doing? I am finishing this book. Allow for that discovery. No one needs to know.
Like me, there may be a story or a case study that speaks to you, not even necessarily aligned with the theme of the book, but rather, something that hits and jolts you onto a brand new path.
That is the power of books.
