Woohoo I actually read some books this week!
As I mentioned in my last 8 Week Challenge update, I’ve been sacrificing my reading time for writing time. As it appears, for at least 4/7 days this week, I’ve swapped that around completely. Oops.
I do still have the weekend to try to turn that around though, and I’ve got some writing plans to get done. But you’ll read all about that for my next update.
Here is what I read this week:
Here we are, at the end of week 2! Ahh! I knew the time before we moved would fly by, but man!
To refresh your memory, my eight week challenge involves pushing myself to make some good changes and form some healthy habits for myself. For me, this is so that when I move, I feel like I’ve made some accomplishments and I’ve set myself up for success in Texas.
My challenges to myself were to read 30 minutes a day, write 500 words a day, and work on my health.
So here’s my end of week 2 update: Continue reading
So accountability time!
To refresh your memory, my eight week challenge involves pushing myself to make some good changes and form some healthy habits for myself. For me, this is so that when I move, I feel like I’ve made some accomplishments and I’ve set myself up for success in Texas.
My challenges to myself were to read 30 minutes a day, write 500 words a day, and work on my health.
So here’s my end of week 1 update: Continue reading
Greetings and happy (early) Memorial Day!
I have eight weeks left to go at my job until my last day, and then we are on the road to Texas just one week later.
Before I leave Virginia, I really want to make some productive changes in my life. Take all the things I’ve committed to this year and actually accomplish some things!
This year, my new year’s resolutions involved losing weight, reading more, and writing more.
At different parts of the year, I’ve attempted to focus my attention on one of these goals, but (like always) a week later I’d lose interest.
Which brings me to my eight week challenge.
Like everything I do in life, I get really excited about something, do it for a week, and then completely forget about it.
It’s my fatal flaw, really.
I guess it’s not as bad as sitcoms where they show the child in the family having done like 10,000 different things for just a week at a time and not committing to anything. I commit! It just takes me longer to accomplish things because I commit to lots of stuff and then jump around them endlessly.
So, I present a very measly Fiction Friday:
There are usually 4 formats to buy a book in: hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. Which one is the best? See these pros and cons before deciding for yourself!
Pro: It’s always available on release day. This point comes down to patience. I am an impatient person when it comes to book releases, so I want the next book in a series yesterday. So, if a book is released that I’ve been anticipating for a while, I’ll buy the hardcover on the release day. Continue reading
A new blog segment! Yay!
Fiction Friday is different for everyone. But for The Caffeinated Writer, Fiction Friday will be a round-up of the books I read this week, plus a short summary of my feelings about that book.
Most of these books are classics or very popular contemporary YA novels, so I probably won’t write formal reviews for most of them.
SO, without further ado: Continue reading
Good morning, friends. And thank you.
You stuck with me even during a tumultuous 2-week hiatus in which I made excuses for myself, got so much dental work done, and started really considering what my future holds for me.
So to update, I wrote a total of 147 words during Camp NaNoWriMo. That same feeling washed over me on day 1 as it did last year, where I had built up too much excitement it seems for the novel I’d been planning to write. And then when the first day came along, it all washed away. I was stoked to write I Should’ve Eloped. But I think in postponing the wedding, all the anger I held towards planning the damn thing washed away too. Continue reading
I’m starting a new segment of my blog, titled Monday Musings, where I write about whatever is on my mind that day. Sometimes reading/writing related, sometimes not. You never know. Here is MM #1.
You know, I started reading a book yesterday off my Goodreads list (a review will be coming soon!), and I’ll tell you — reading books just makes me want to write them so much. But never the current project(s) I’m working on. Nooooo. I always want to start something new.
I get lots of inspiration from what I read. That’s why I tend to read only the genres I enjoy writing in.
The book I’m reading is a thriller of sorts. A man gets abducted after being held up at his work. His life is thrown off schedule. It’s one of those books that makes you think about your life.
While reading this book, I started to think of my own abduction story (I have written one before. It was self-published through Createspace, and it does still exist on Amazon. But I’m not telling you anything else about it haha, because I was a senior in high school, and it’s not good). A basic plot started to form in my head. And I had to catch myself before I got too interested in it.
I already have two projects to finish, brain. Stop it. The worst thing I can do is to have so many projects going at once that I’ll never finish any of them. I’m on a schedule now. I have finish date goals for my two WIPs (see my new page!) and I need to stick to those.
It’s so hard though for me to shelve ideas like these. I’m excited about them now. How do I know if I’ll still be excited about it later? Maybe that’s the thing though. If I don’t love it as much then as I do now, was it not as much a priority as I thought?
What I’m telling myself right now is that I need to finish Cover Up. And when I can sit down and read through it, I can see once and for all if it can be salvaged at all, or if it needs to be completely redone from top to bottom. Currently, that’s what I’m thinking, but I haven’t actually reread any of it yet, so who really knows. If it needs to be redone completely, I can shelve it for awhile. Work on Where I Belong and then MAYBE pick up a new project along the way.
I guess this is all so foreign to me because ever since I graduated from college (May 2014), I took a hiatus from writing. I was reading during the summer while job hunting (I waited tables 4 nights a week. I had so much free time!), but putting my own ideas down wasn’t a priority. My major was English, dangit. I guess I just got exhausted from being forced to read and write for 4 years.
When I picked up on NaNo again this year, it was the first time I’d written since my last semester. Almost a full year and a half. Whew.
And now here I am, every idea swirling in my brain. I pick up a new book, love the plot so much that I want to write my own rendition of it, but then lose interest when another new idea comes to fruition later on.
I guess what I’m going to start doing is writing down my ideas. As much plot as I have in my brain at one time. Keeping them in a notebook full of all my other ideas. And when the time comes to really start a new one, I’ll have a book full of plotlines and characters. And I can choose which ones still get me excited about writing it.
So tell me: What do you do to keep the plot bunnies at bay?
The Caffeinated Writer 