This is what reading 200+ books in one year looks like. Yep, I really did read them all this year, despite having a death in the family that I thought would derail my reading. It didn't; if anything, it reinforced it and spurred me to read some non-fiction about grief and grieving, as well.
However, I did very little writing this year; only about 15K+ words, and little or no editing on my existing WIPs, Dragon's Leap, Babytime on the Border or Dragon Scales. In fact, I started drafting a fourth WIP, Defenders of Jackalope Loop, which I'm going to finish this year, and I have a 5th, Dragon's Journey, I'm knee-deep in plotting.
So I'm going on book reviewing and social media hiatus until I've done a few revisions and finished a rough draft of Jackalope. No more posts here or elsewhere. How long will this take? IDK. It could be a while or not. In any case, I'll still be reading, just not writing reviews and posting them. I'll be starring/rating titles on GR and at my library, but that's it.
And my teaching materials will still be here. I may do some maintenance on them, as Strikingly's many updates to the free blog platform over time has broken many of the links to my own, self-created teaching resources uploaded to the site, and they need to be checked and re-done. Blog post maintenance. Yuck.
I'm also considering using another blog host when I start blogging again, as my Internet provider routinely blocks Strikingly, because it's based in China, and this makes edits extremely difficult on my end, especially for the small proofreading mistakes that get past me in individual posts. In many cases, just creating a post is exceptionally difficult, depending on how aggressively my Internet provider has decided to block Strikingly on that day. I really want to find a host that perhaps doesn't look quite as good, but I can create and edit posts with ease.
We've all had three years of difficult times, including navigating school & college during COVID lockdowns, family COVID deaths, and cancer deaths in our family (both sides). It's been a lot to take in and keep going at the same pace, and while I kept up the book reviews, and learned so much about my craft by reading and writing reviews that I couldn't have learned any other way, my writing and editing was put on the backburner, 2022 in particular.
No longer. Writing is coming first in 2023.
If you hear from me at all in the upcoming year, it'll be to talk about that.
Wishing you all the best for 2023, and have a productive writing week!
I know I will. ;-)
