Cephalopod Coffeehouse + Goals :: FEB

I've only read the one book this month, so I guess my review will have to be of that one - Mistborn book #1, by Brandon Sanderson. This is my first Sanderson read, if you don't count the Wheel of Time books he helped to complete (which I sort of don't...).

I enjoyed the read, but it was very slow going. A lot of the time I would read a few paragraphs and then put the book down. Whereas at other times, the story would suddenly get quite suspenseful and I would be eager to read on and find out what happened next, e.g. when Vin realises that Elend is in mortal danger and rushes off to save him.

I think the world Sanderson has built so far is fascinating, and I'm oh so curious to read on and find out where he's going to take the story in book 2 - because the major goal has already been achieved. So I guess there must be new huge challenges in store for Vin and her friends!

Gee, it's been a while since my last "goals confession". It was actually back on November 28th that I last participated in this bloghop. At that point, I was still in the midst of a rather slack NaNoWriMo, nearly at the end of my novel. But at least I had well and truly achieved my reading goal for the year.

This year so far, I've done some editing on my novel SUNDOWN III, but have been really slow at reading. It took me around 1.5 months to read one book, which is pretty unusual, even for slow-reading me. And now it's nearly March!! This year is flying, but then, they all seem to do that a bit these days.

My goals for the next month are 1) to do more editing, as 'life' has been getting in the way of that a bit in recent weeks. And 2) to read a bit more quickly.

I hope you are all reading great books, and making great strides towards achieving your goals!

A to Z blogging challenge 2015

I have once again signed up for the A to Z challenge this year. If you're a new member of the blogging community (or a not so new one, for that matter!), this is a great event to participate in.

Assuming you manage to visit lots of blogs during the event, you should get lots of visitors in return. And it's so fun to see the wildly different themes people around the world choose to go with for the Challenge. It's also pretty insane - an exhausting month that leaves us all dazzled and frazzled!

But  ... it's worth it.

The trickiest part can be choosing a theme. Some years I have waited till the very last minute to decide on my theme. But it's much better to decide ahead of time - less stressful. I guess waiting till the last minute is just one more way in which I show my pantsing side, though. ;)

This year, like all years, I am trying to think of a good theme that will also be 'easy' to do, ahead of time. haha. Wish me luck?

Are you participating in the A to Z this year?

Editing ctd., sort of (and foster kitty)

Since my last update, I've done a bit more editing - but since the weekend began, I haven't done any. Tonight I hope to get some more done, but I had a terrible night's sleep last night, with kitty rescue "stuff to do" pestering my mind, so I guess we'll see. :P

This morning while I was trying to get back to sleep after two hours awake and tinkering with said "to do stuff", one of my foster kitties, Maurizio, decided it was time to play his new favourite game - Tug on the Bit of Carpet That Isn't Meant to be Lifting But Is! It's an awesome game, sure, but at around 5:30 am on very little sleep I wasn't as in the mood for it as I usually might be! So I got my kitty spray bottle ready for the next time he started up with his tugging.

Of course he somehow sensed this was going on, because he quit the game immediately. But not wanting to encourage a later continuation, I locked him and the other fosters out of my room anyway, and managed maybe 40 minutes more sleep before my alarm went off.

So that's where I'm at today - sleep deprived, but reasonably happy I guess. And I have chocolate in my drawer here at work - I can tell you right now I won't be waiting till Chocolate Friday to crack that open (it's only Wednesday).

Maurizio, my stunning foster boy.

I actually EDITED something!

Mind is officially blown. I did some editing last night.

I decided to just go ahead and edit one of my novels I've been wanting to edit for ages now (SUNDOWN III I guess I can call it, since the previous revision resulted in SUNDOWN II). I edited chapters 1 & 2 ages ago and was excited about where it was going, but it's taken me this long to get back to it, because I was stuck on my other not-yet-finished editing project. ;)

So yeah, last night I edited some stuff. And I already know that one section I edited should probably be deleted altogether. The book currently has two points of view, but I am considering removing the male point of view entirely.

The book also contains much passive aggressive martyrdom, which I was sure I got away from in a much earlier revision. But it clearly crept back in. So I have to work on getting rid of that, once again.

It felt good to actually edit something. I'll see how I go tonight when I continue.

Slow start to the reading year

I finally finished my first book of the year - Kyra Lennon's Blindsided. I have also been reading book #1 in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, and I'm enjoying it, but it hasn't gripped me in a way that just won't let me put it down. Hence why I started another book in the middle of reading it. ;)

I haven't done much of anything else this year so far, in terms of being creative. But I am getting more and more eager to start revising something again. The problem is, I want to revise many things except the main project I was working on revising last year. :P I have been slowly achieving my other main goal, though - cleaning out what's in my garage. Another thing I really hope to achieve soon is selling my car! I have a new one already, so now I have two cars in my possession. I really don't need two cars.

So it's February, and I realised I forgot to participate in both the end-of-the-month blog hops I usually participate in. Sorry guys! I will do better this month, I swear.