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!