S'okay. I might have written more if the story hadn't taken a left turn that left me doing the contemplation thing for several days trying to figure out how to allow the turn, but steer the story back to where it needed to be.

Because this turn did not want to be ignored.

I've just been busy trying to get a copyediting job done. But tomorrow! Tomorrow it will be done and gone, and I can get back to it. Which I'm actually looking forward to.

The rush challenge is closed.

This week's challenge is hope .

If you're reading a brand new book, how long do you give it before you give up on it? I've been reading some new books by authors I like, and I've realized I'm reluctant to start some because I'm not sure I'll like them. So how long do you give a book to engage you? Does it matter if it's a familiar author or not?

One reason I'm asking is from a writer angle. How much patience does the average reader have for getting into an unfamiliar book?

One reason I'm asking is from a writer angle. How much patience does the average reader have for getting into an unfamiliar book?

According to most readers and editors, about two chapters. If you haven't captured them, either with voice or plot or characterizations, they'll bail, unless, again, it's an author they're familiar with-- then, halfway seems to be the killing point.

ETA: Depends on genre, of course. Fantasy & sci-fi seem to have higher thresholds than say, romance, which is why I've had an impossible time selling a romance manuscript. I take my time setting up and weaving my stories and that seems to be anathema for the genre

Then there's that whole pesky, I don't follow the "rules" of romance worth a damn that tends to be the nail on the coffin.

I almost gave up on a book I just finished. It didn't start getting interesting until page 200, and it only had 300 pages. I didn't give up only because Patricia Briggs blurbed it...which makes me less likely to pick up a book in the future if I would have been interested just because she blurbed it.

That's awfully convoluted.

I was recently reading a thriller that I almost gave up on, but it was a fast read and I soldiered on. However, when I was on page 100, I yelled, "For the love of god, kill somebody." If it's a thriller, you have to have actual danger early on, not 100 pages of someone thinking a new doctor is creepy.

This book also, memorably, described a period of silence as "turgid" and a sky as "tumescent." There was some unresolved sexual tension in the book, which expressed itself in random adjectives.

Speaking as a reader (as opposed to someone who's actually written something), I usually try to get to the end, even if I skim a lot. But there are some books ... sigh ... either the plot has me thinking been there/done that without any redeeming new element, or I really dislike the main characters (and there aren't any interesting secondary characters), or it's badly written, or I find myself compiling lists of anachronisms or of misused words, or something about it makes me hate it I'll give up.

I never give up on a book. It's a failing, actually, because I waste a lot of time reading really really subpar books. But I read fast, so it's okay. Closest I ever came was Cryptonomicon or whatever the hell that hot mess was. I threw that book (a shocking act from must-not-damage-the-books me), but I finished it. And that was a damn lot of pages.

I read fairly quickly, too. But I've come to accept that some books just aren't worth the time. I recently read a rather odd book - "The Cowboy and the Vampire" - that I'm still iffy on, but it held my interest enough to finish it. But a little while ago I was reading a romantic suspense book and found that I disliked both the hero and heroine enough, and could see exactly where the story was going, that I gave up on it.