Novemberish wrapup: Writing and reading mania


November has been a month of balancing my time and energy.  You'd think after 30 days of NaNoWriMo, I would be ready to take a break. But no...I'm still deep into my story "Blue Steel" and eager to push on and finish it.  Although I think both Father and James are glad the month is over.  It's been a month of blank looks, uh huh's and late dinners while I'd write, then push to type all my scribblings up in order to make sure I'm keeping up.  I'm going try and keep the same momentum going with the writing, push for the 1600 words or at least 5 written pages a day and finish the story by the end of December.  That way I can start the year fresh and dive into outlining and editing and researching.  

I had a plan during the month of November to read unputdownable books so that I wouldn't get caught up in a story at breakfast time, decide to keep reading and then find my writing time had completely disappeared.  I soon discovered, I rarely choose books that are unputdownable.  *grin*    So I ramped up the willpower and used them as rewards for making my daily goals.   The books I read during the month were:

  1. The Next Always - Nora Roberts
  2. Soulless - Gail Carriger
  3. Waking the Witch - Kelley Armstrong
  4. The Whisper - Carla Neggers (E-Book)
  5. The Immortals - J.T. Ellison 
  6. Warning Signs - C.J. Lyons (e-book)
  7. The Memory Collector - Meg Gardner
  8. 61 Hours - Lee Child
  9. The Immortals - J.T. Ellison
  10. Seal of My Dreams anthology - Cindy Gerard, et all
  11. Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture - Apostolos Doxiadis
  12. Blood Bound - Rachel Vincent
  13. Beautiful Lies - Lisa Unger
  14. Vampire's Violin - Michael Romkey
  15. Worth Dying For - Lee Child
I did find myself slowing down a bit, analyzing, absorbing their writing styles, picking out what I liked and didn't, learning as I read and finding I could still enjoy the story in the process.  I also acquired some fabulous writing books and during December will be putting together my list of craft books to study during 2012.    

I've picked out the remaining books to read to finish the A to Z challenge and just have x, y, and z to complete.  For X I found Death of a Red Heroine by Qui Xialolong and Mister X by John Lutz.  For Y Shadow of the Moon by Rebecca York and Year Zero by Jeff Long.  Z is Hostage Zero by John Gilstrap and Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey.  Wish me luck.


Time to get back to normal or as near normal as possible. See you around the Blogosphere!

4 comments:

  1. WOW! That's more books than I've read in the last 10 years. Good luck on finishing Blue Steel!

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  2. Love that you want to keep going with your story. That's always a good sign.

    Love, too, that you're so deliberate with your reading goals. Good for you!

    All the best as you carry on.

    TTFN

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  3. Good luck with finishing by the end of the year -- you're almost there!

    And wow on having only a few books left for A to Z.

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  4. With everything that you do I am amazed at the number of books you completed this month!!

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