Thursday, June 30, 2016

Diving Back In

If you remember in my last post, I mentioned I was trying to ease back into reading books that I wanted to read rather than what was required for my classes. I stated the tower of books on my dresser stretched to ten (plus three books on my Kindle). It was down to seven, I believe, once June hit.

Well. I then added four books to that tower throughout the month of June. It seemed like every time I finished one, another was added.

But! I found that once I started reading these wonderful books, I churned them out quickly. (Not because I needed to shrink my book pile down as quickly as possible, but because the stories drew me in.)

And in the end, I managed to start and complete seven books during the course of June (for a total of 2,398 pages).

So now I’m down to only three books in stack. Hooray!

Are you confused by the math yet?

I feel like June was “Month of Stories” for me. I obviously did a ton of reading and in between that, I took six days off of this activity to binge-watch the first two seasons of The 100 (I need season 3, Netflix!). Also, this past Sunday marked the end of Game of Thrones until next year. (What am I going to do with myself on Sunday nights now? The Walking Dead, which is also on Sundays, doesn’t start up again until October.)

It’s safe to say that I accomplished reading again since school ended. However, I have yet to do any writing.

And when I say that, I mean, other than all the stories I had to write as class assignments, I haven’t written anything for myself since November. November! When I finished and won NaNoWriMo.

It has been seven months.

This is not okay.

I found, in the past, if I go 2-3 months without creatively writing something, I become restless to type something out. But then I freeze up, scared to write again. As if all of my skills could fly out of the window in those short months.

For the past three years, I had a writing project to do in the summer. This year, I got nothing.

So yesterday, I made the decision that I’m going to do my own version of Camp NaNoWriMo (which occurs during the month of July). It’s a good motivator in order to force me to write again.

I have no idea what I’m going to write about, though. I get the feeling that if I tried to focus on one story, I’ll end up repeating what I did last November. You know, start with one story, hit a road block and no longer become interested in it, and then start a new story until I find one that sticks.

My goal is to write at least 1,000 words a day during the month of July (simple math, total end goal for the word count: 31,000). That’s do-able, right?

I guess we’ll have to see what the month of July will bring.




P.S. How in the world is tomorrow July already? Half of the 2016 year is over? Whaaaat??