I’m a day late posting this. It was written yesterday and then computer drama happened. I thought it was going to be a localized digital apocalypse, but happily just turned out to be time consuming, with no lasting effects. *deep, relieved breath*
Anyhow, as with every year lately, I cannot believe it’s a new year already! Unfortunately, it would appear that my belief is not required. It is 2016. So, what will I do with it; hopefully lots of things (not all of them relevant to this blog).
Writing-wise, I’m about 50% into first drafts of two projects. In fantasyland I’d finish both of them. Here in reality, I’m aiming to have one ready to go out to betas and an editor by year-end (hopefully before).
In terms of reading, I’m laying off the challenges this year. I signed up for Goodreads’ reading challenge, aiming for 250 books. But this should be looked at a little skeptically. I’m starting 2016 as I ended 2015, with a broken arm that makes typing (and therefore reviewing) laborious. So, until my cast comes off, I’m concentrating on cleaning off my novelette/novella shelf. This has the obvious result up artificially inflating my ‘books read’ number. So, 200 books is my true goal. The rest is just padding.
I quite enjoyed the alphabet soup challenge last year and will do it again. Basically, this just means I’ll read at least one book by an author whose name starts with each letter of the alphabet (yes, even X). I also liked the TBR challenge I did in 2015, in which I tried to read books that had been on my To-Be-Read list 2+ years. So, I’ll do that again. But I think that’s about it and I’m not signing up with anyone else for these. I’ll just be accountable to myself.
I’ll still keep myself open to review requests and try to read at least one a month, same for Netgalley. And I don’t even need a challenge to read Indie or SP books, that’s the majority of what I read nowadays. So, that’s about it.
I have decided to try and read better books. One thing that came out in writing my 2015 wrap-up was that I read a lot of books that were just so-so, last year. This, I think, largely comes down the fact that I read so many freebies. I don’t mean that as any sort of horrible generalization about books offered for free, but I am going to try and curb the urge to go, “Well, it’s free. I’ll give it a shot.” Because it’s often a failure. So, I plan on being a bit more discerning.
In the real, not book related world I’ve got yoga, tae kwon do (I’m a mere yellow belt, at least for now), family, friends, life, etc. So, there are plenty of distractions and reasons things could go astray. But as far as reading goes, this is my plan. What’s yours?
Ok, fine, I gave in and joined this Action Heroine Fans challenge too. Mostly because they had a nifty little Goodreads accounting system and I didn’t even know you could do that.