January Review: Dropping Plates

Heeeyyy... so you know the thought about dropping plates in a metaphorical sense? It's when you have way too much to do, so you're balancing plates that have everything you need to get done in your life. One plate is family and another plate is writing and another plate is something completely else that is going on in your life. With dropping a plate, you're doing so in order to keep the other plates and your life in balance. It's kind of refreshing to realize that, depending on what plate you're dropping, it will not bring about the end of the world. Now, if you drop the family plate without good reason - toxic family relationship, people demanding too much of your time when you don't have enough to give - then there are big consequences. If you drop say, the writing plate, you are going to suffer because you're not writing and growing as a writer.

For me, the plates I dropped were this blog and my big reading list for January. I did read a book and started others but the book that I finished was 11/22/63 by Stephen King about going back in time to save Kennedy. It's one of the best, believable time travel stories that I have read in a long time and I forgot how much I love Stephen King's writing. I started Turtles All the Way Down but didn't really finish it. That's more my fault than the book - the start is excellent and grabs you - but I just dropped it for no good reason than I needed to. Devil in the White City is being pushed back and so on and so forth. So, yes, I completely dropped my reading plate. However, I am picking it back up in February and allowing myself one fiction and one nonfiction book that I am reading on my own. I am now part of a very loose book club and I will allow myself a third book as the book club choice. However, we might also go with a read your own book and talk about it thing so that would be helpful too. So, in dropping the plate of reading, it helped me realize that I tried to do too much. Scaling it back to one dedicated book of fiction and nonfiction will help. Now, might I read more? Yep. However, we're going to stay with the baseline.

The other plate I dropped was this blog. I apologize to people who are here reading and were wondering where the heck I went. I am always on Twitter as CrescentLizzy so please, feel free to go follow me. I am a lot more political on there, so you have been warned, but I'm not ashamed of it. Sorry not sorry as people say now. However, the reason I dropped the blog is two fold. One is that I just had a mental breakdown the second week of January. I was getting nothing done, it felt like everything was sufficating me, and I just felt there was no way out. Thankfully, I have a very understanding friend who got it and showed me the way to get out of the funk. Basically, it's a list everyday in my Erin Condren planner of what needs to get done no matter what during the day. Every day I write down dishes as the last thing to check off because I always need to do dishes. I've taken up yoga which has been so helpful with the mental health and that goes at the top of the checklist. Making order out of my life has helped a lot with getting things done.

The second reason, that I am extremely happy to annouce, is that I finished getting the edits in for the third chunk of Mystery of the Dark. As of this writing, it has been sent back to my editor who is going to rain down rainbows and puppies on me for fixing a lot of the things. Ok, maybe not rainbows and puppies, but I feel a ton better just getting that out of the way. The problem now is that I need to go and fix the series to redo some subplots. Like the entire romance subplot between Kate and Justinian that is now on the official slow burn train. It works so much better for them, so I'm happy it got pointed out and I went that way. However, it now means that I have to figure out when their official first kiss is and so on. Also, I have a better understanding of where to go with book two because I was kind of floundering with writing it. It was a minor clusterbomb and it's going to be better now. So, yeah, the blog plate got dropped due to mental health and editing.

I'm looking at my January goals and laughing at getting the third chunk done by the 15th. That didn't happen but it did get done. Ditto to the second book being completely written and so on. For next month, we're going to have overall goals for the month and, if things get done before the 28th, then that's great. If they get done on the 28th, that's great too. The thing is that shit is getting done and, for me, that's an awesome goal to hit.

How did your January go? Leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter and I'll see you next time.

What I'm Reading in January

source: fanpop

Alright, so let's get to what I'm reading in January! Now, this is not going to be everything I'm reading in January. I sometimes swap books in and out, depending on how they're holding my interest, and I might move something I started reading in January to finish in a different month. With that out of the way, let's get into what I'm reading.

• The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro - A couple goes to find their son that they haven't seen in years and there's a tag of dragons with it. I loved Never Let Me Go and my friend Amanda recommended this, so I'm thinking it's a good follow up read of the author.
• Turtles All the Way Down by John Green - My friend (and editor!) erin basically went, in all caps, you have to read this. She's rarely ever wrong on good books when John Green is involved, so we'll give this one a shot too.
• Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris - This, while sounding amazing, might end up on my DNF (did not finish) list. I read Chocolat and it is not one of my favorite books. I always like to give an author another try before I swear them off completely due to incapability in narrative and other things. The only author that I have not given a second chance to is George R.R. Martin and he knows what he did. 
• Unmentionable : The Victorian Lady's Guide To Sex, Marriage, And Manners by Therese Oneill - This is my research book of the month. I like reading one book where I break out a notebook and take notes about it for a future book setting.
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton - I still don't know how I haven't already read this book. When I was a teenager, I devoured so much of his work and multiple times too. So this will be a nice throwback to my teenage years.
• The Devil In The White City : Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson - I've been told I need to read this for a few years now. So I'm going to read it already. That's the long and short of the story for this one.
• Mrs. Sherlock Holmes : The True Story Of New York's City's Greatest Female Detective And The 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated A Nation by Brad Ricca - My friend Katie recommended it to me for reasons that I don't remember. Or maybe I saw it on her Facebook or Goodreads feed and thought it sounded good. Either way, it's on the list to be read this month.

So that's the reading list for the month. It seems like a lot, but considering how I want to pick back up how I used to read, it doesn't feel like too much. Time will tell and I wish you all happy reading!

The 2018 Books Post

This is the dump post for books that I will be reading in 2018. As I love lists, I'm going to be segmenting what I read into the following: to read, rereads, finish this year, read, did not finish, and move to 2019. The last will be used more as we get into the later part of 2018 as I've got a long list of things I want to read along with rereads. I'm going to try to do a mix of new and rereads, but we'll see how that goes. Also, these are not in any order. They're more in the "oh, that one" type order. Also, this list will probably grow throughout the year.

To Read
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
The Fire Pit by Chris Ould (book 3 of Faroes)
Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
Mrs Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca

Rereads
The Martian by Andy Weir
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey

Finish This Year
Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey

Read

Did Not Finish

Move to 2019

Photo of the Day - What's Your Winter Quote?

Happy Wednesday from what is a very cold Chicago Suburb. I decided to gt out of the house - a mixture of stir crazy and routine - and the walk was cold but nice. There's something about walking through snow that brings on a meditative quality. You calm down as you continue to walk, making sure that you don't slip on that bit of ice you can't see, and control breathing through your nose instead of your mouth. Not just because your glasses will fog up but because breathing through the nose in winter might be better for you. Until your face is cold even with the scarf and you breathe out through the mouth to warm up.

It can't compare to the much better activity of walking through fallen leaves. For one, it's not usually as cold and there's a crunch that brings joy to the heart. Good things are happening with the season changing and the colors being a vibrant red or orange instead of just green. There's a favorite quote of mine - Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower (Albert Camus) - because it's true. Yes, the flowers are dying and we won't see them again until spring, but you look up and color is all around you.

I have yet to find a favorite quote about winter. I loathe the song "Baby It's Cold Outside" and the quote that goes along with it. I've always hated the song. At first, it was too cutesy to be taken seriously and then, when I became an adult, it was hard not to see all the date rape references in it. BrainyQuote, when you search for winter, came up with this: In seed time, learn. In harvest time, teach, in winter enjoy (William Blake). Which... okay, it's good. It's true. But does it resonate? Eh, not really. Let's look at the others.

"Winter is a season of recovery and preparation" - Paul Theroux
"Winter is not a season, it's an occupation" - Sinclair Lewis
"The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship" - Norman Douglas

Okay. I found it. "There are only two season - winter and baseball" says Bill Veeck. That might be the winner for today. What's your favorite winter quote? Feel free to leave it below or hit me up on social media. Until later, have a great day of creativity!

The Specific January Goals

image credit to bored panda

Yesterday I posted my goals for the 1st quarter of 2018 and... well, those are the big goals. I need some smaller goals, for the month, in order to get things done. This is going to be short and to the point. I do apologize for it not being longer or more in depth, but we might do that in other posts.

So, this month's goals:

• Finish the final chunk of MoD 1 editing by January 15th
• Finish writing MoD 2 by January 31st
• Start the 1st chunk re-edits of MoD 1 on January 16th to finish by January 31st
• Finish redoing the plot of MoD 3 by January 31st
• Read!
• Keep on updating this blog and annoying people with blog posts.

Okay, so maybe not annoying, but you know what I mean. I hope. Good luck with your goals for the month and feel free to share them in the comments!

Goals for 2018: The Quarters of the Year

credit autumnonfoxst.com

Hello 2018 and a Happy New Year / New Year's Day to you! This is my goals post, where I'm breaking down what I want to get done via the quarters of the year. If you're unfamiliar with this system, it's 4 chunks of the years with 90-92 days each and it seems like a good way to set somewhat concrete goals. I am toying with the idea of monthly goals, but we'll see how it goes. I will be posting updates on Sundays on what is getting done and my goals for the upcoming week, so keep an eye out for that.

Now, this is going to look weird. It's supposed to look weird. I want to see how much I get done in quarter 1 before I start to plan quarter 2. So, this is the master post of the goals for 2018. At the end of March, I'll edit this post with what got done, why it didn't get done, and write down my quarter 2 goals. I'll also make another post that shows that too so you don't have to come back to this one unless you want to. Let's get into the list of goals, shall we? And feel free to share your goals in the comments.

Quarter One: January - March

• Finish the third chunk of editing Mystery of the Dark and send it back to editor.
• Do the last edit of the first and second chunks of Mystery of the Dark
• Do the last edit of the third chunk of Mystery of the Dark when they're sent back
• Finish writing Slight of Hand: Mystery of the Dark Book 2
• Rework the plot of Flash of Fang: Mystery of the Dark Book 3
• Rewrite parts of Flash of Fang: Mystery of the Dark Book 3
• Plot Song of Siren: Mystery of the Dark Book 4
• Start editing Slight of Hand: Mystery of the Dark Book 2
• Research / set up the Podcast: Words 'n Geekery on iTunes or another place for podcasts
• Reading: Read 3 novels
• Blogging: Blog at least once a week, try for twice a week

Quarter Two: April - June

• Start writing Song of Siren: Mystery of the Dark Book 4

Quarter Three: July - September

Quarter Four: October - December