Feb 01, 2013 22:00
Ok, didn't post nearly so much to the blog this past month as I'd hoped. Been a rather busy month, and I still haven't figured out how to get blogging time back into the schedule/priority list. I'm sure I will, when I give myself permission to breathe and relax.
So, here's my month in summary:
Reading: Three novels. Range of Ghosts, by Elizabeth Bear. (Well, technically, started that in December on vacation and finished it up in January) A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. Yeah, those are some rather big books. What can I say, I like my Fantasy with enough heft to use as a lethal weapon. Well, except that these days I'm mostly reading ebooks. Dammit you know what I mean. All three were great reads. Two beginnings and one finale. I will miss reading the Wheel of Time. I look forward to book two of Bear's series. I believe that's on the way soon. And I have book two of Rothfuss's series, but I need to meter my reading. Three books in one month definitely ate into my writing time. I paid a bit more attention to that this year. I pushed to do a LOT of reading last year, and my writing paid the price in productivity. Hey, I only get the same 24 hours a day as everyone else, the hours reading are hours not writing. BUT, I'm keeping in mind Steven Gould's advice from VP. You cannot just breathe out, you need to breathe in too. So, I've seriously cut back my TV time in some effort to compensate. Still, have to meter the reading. I'm technically also "reading" the Audiobook of Crime and Punishment. But it's long. I thought I'd get through it by now, but I'll be lucky to get through it by end of February. Still, I like taking on the classics on Audiobook. A good reader can hold the attention where my more modern eye would probably wander on the page. I will probably pick something modern and shorter after this for commuting.
Writing: Started three short stories. Completed one full first draft. The other two are in progress. (One sort of fizzled when the "idea" didn't pan out a real story, so I need to take that one back to the drawing board and start over. The other needs a bit more research and care, and I'm doing a little reading beacuse I want to make sure the why of things matters. I completed two drafts on another story, including what I think might be my final draft, but I fear isn't. I'd planned on submitting that as my submission for the month, but I decided I needed a bit more feedback, so that's out to some beta readers. It means I miss my goal of getting one story out in the wild per month. However, I think just submitting it without one more look over from independant eyes when I have a nagging feeling in the back of my head a bad idea. Arbitrary goals are arbitrary. I set them as measure and to drive myself to take on and do more. I'll submit that story one way or the other in February, and I'll count it as my January submission, which means I'll need to do another story for February.
Submissions: None. See above. Falling behind and I'll have to dig in double to catch up.
Editing: No work this month.
Music: Due to circumstances, I came into possession of a digital copy of one of the recordings of music my band made. The recordings were never 100% compelete, though I think there might be one other copy with more complete versions of the songs (only two on this copy have vocal tracks for example, although most of the songs had words), as well as I recall that we had recorded at minimum two MORE songs than are on the "album" that I have. I can't believe we did that 20 years ago. It's pretty cool, and I think we did a decent job for all the low end equipment we had, and the fact that our lead guitarist was I think 17 at the time. (Not me, I'm strictly a rhythm guitarist). But it's got me bit by the music bug again, so I've started practicing once again on the guitar. Not every single day, but at least several days a week. And I've written a song, though, it's really just the rhythm part, so, kind of not a complete song as of yet. I might poke around and do some recording of it to see if I can come up with other parts too. This falls into the fun category. Of course, that eats up a bit of the time I'm freeing up by not watching TV. So, a trade off. But, if I can do some cool stuff with it, I'd much rather have more music in my life than more TV. (I'm not down on TV, but I know I can too easily get sucked into it, and end up watching so much TV that I stop producing. I'd rather be a producer than a consumer if I can manage it.)
So that's the state of the Ed.
How about you? How'd your start of the year go so far?