Post-birthday thoughts

Yesterday was my birthday, and, perhaps partially because it's conveniently toward the middle of the year, I tend to make some new goals and resolutions at my birthday to replace my abandoned New Year's resolutions. So that means today, the day after my birthday, I shall sit here and eat leftover cake and blather at you about them.

Next year I'll be thirty, and I don't really MIND getting older, but it still feels . . . something. So I thought that this year I should concentrate on just doing things that will make progress toward Big Life Goals, so at least I'll go into my thirties feeling like I'm on the right track. Or something. Anyway, since this blog is mostly about reading and writing, the important thing here is the writing goal: I am determined that by my next birthday, I will at least be at the querying stage with my novel. The rough timeline in my head is that I should have a complete draft by Christmas, and then spend the first half of 2012 revising and rewriting. And I will pledge to put some sort of writing update here once a week, to keep myself accountable. Hold me to it!

My reading goals are mostly in the interests of keeping myself sane, because when I'm busy it's easy to cut back on reading time, but then I go nuts. Really. So. I'm going to start trying to carve out AT LEAST an hour of uninterrupted reading time every night, and see how that goes. I'm hoping this will also mean I FINISH books more often instead of starting lots and leaving them scattered around. (I've long since given up any attempt at actually only reading one book at a time. I can't. I just can't.) And I also want to write about a higher percentage of the books I read, so I will write SOMETHING here about books at least once a week, either a review of one book or a quick "three good mysteries I've read recently" thing or something like that. (One thing I HAVE been managing to do is keep a list of the books I've read so far this year, so that's something.)

My library is having some of its carpets replaced, so the adult stacks are CLOSED at the moment. That, of course, means that all of a sudden I am thinking of dozens of books I DESPERATELY NEED and having to convince myself not to just buy them all. On the other hand, the renovations mean that the borrowing period is longer than usual, so I have a LOT of books out right now. We'll see how many I can actually get through by the time the library reopens and wants their books back.

And on that note . . . I should stop blathering about reading and go actually read.