challenge

Goodreads 2013 Reading Challenge

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So it's time to consider challenges for the year again. Last year I failed miserably in my challenge to read 30 books. I had thought 30 was a safe number, given that in 2011, I successfully read 100 books. Shock/surprise; it turns out that writing a lot and reading a lot are kind of mutually exclusive. Who'd have thought it?

This year I'm going to go for 15 books. I did successfully finish reading 16 books last year, so this might sound like a soft target, but I plan to write more this year than I did last year, so the difficulty of finding reading time will only increase. This will become especially true once I'm working full time again.

2013 Reading Challenge

2013 Reading Challenge
Gord has read 0 books toward his goal of 15 books.
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So here I sit at 0. Let's watch this counter tick upward as the year progresses! Thanks to shows like The Sword & Laser and This Week in Science, I'll face no shortage of books to read.

Camp NaNoWriMo/JuNoWriMo Begins. Ack.

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It’s that time again… National Novel Writing Month. If you’re thinking that’s normally November, you’re right, but it turns out this is an awfully popular passtime, and some people want to do it at other times during the year too.

I’m going to go along with them. I’m signed up at Camp NaNoWriMo, the two-time summer branch of the organization, and will also be flying the JuNoWriMo banner.

It’s been June 1st for a little over an hour now, and I’m not real sure exactly what I’m going to write, but I’ll figure it out.

One big change from November is that this time I’m going to avoid the whole series of short stories thing. I found it difficult to maintain momentum when I had to stop and think up a whole new story at least once a week. So this time it’ll be a longer story I can just plow through.

Camp NaNoWriMo in June is only part one. They also apparently have Camp NaNoWriMo August, which is interesting since it’s a 31 day month, not 30. I’m not sure if I’m crazy enough to do that with only one month in between, but right now, before the madness, it’s kind of tempting.

Wish me luck!

A New Challenge

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I’ve decided to take up the challenge of present tense. Ever since I wrote that first post about my brain having difficulties with present-tense works, I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and so I’m going to go ahead and give a solid attempt at reading the first book in the Spellsong series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Maybe I’ll get into it; the concept is a fascinating one, which is why I was drawn to the book in the first place. I expect it’ll be tough going at first, but this past year has all been about challenging myself in various ways, and so far I’ve risen to every challenge, so I’m sure I can manage it.

In other news, my fascination with reddit.com continues to grow. There’s a fantastic community of communities over there, including several for writers that seem really interesting; particularly /r/write. Keep your fingers crossed that things will work out there. There are interesting plans afoot.

2011 Fiction Hiatus

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I suppose 2 days isn’t much of a hiatus.

I’ll be blogging today and tomorrow (the 30th and 31st) instead of writing fiction, as I’ll be focusing pretty heavily on finishing my 2011 Goodreads Reading Challenge. I’ve written before about the challenge in my post about self-imposed limits. It’s come down to the wire now and when I started today I had read 91 books with 9 remaining to read today and tomorrow. 

I now sit at 95 read, with 5 remaining, one of which I’m going to tackle before I get to bed. Naturally I’m having to read very short books, but even short books take time to read, so this is also a short post.

I’ve met every other challenge I’ve set for myself this year, from NaNoWriMo to writing on a consistent daily basis, so I’m not about to throw this one aside either. Wish me and my soon-to-be aching eyeballs luck!