February Round-up

[cjmarlowe]

All right, then. In February I wrote 75,493 words, and posted 14 ficlets and stories in four fandoms, ranging between roughly 900 and 9000 words, most again falling between 1000 and 2000 words. Most of those words were on stories yet to be posted (one of them today if I stop procrastinating), and I also did turn in a big bang draft early in the month.

I set myself a writing goal of 2000 words a day for this month, to see if I could stick to it. That was 2000 words minimum every single day, no "Oh, I wrote 2500 words yesterday so I can do only 1500 today." It was 2000+ words every day no matter what came before. And I did it. I was thinking about upping it to 2500 this month, but I think I'm going to stick to 2000 for now and see how that goes.

Also, movies and books, February 2010:

Men In Black
Boogie Nights
The Cutting Edge (yes, inspired by Olympic figure skating)
Center Stage
Star Trek
And also:
X-files - Season 3
X-files - Season 4 (and my God, S4 really is as good as I remember it being. Can't wait to get through S5.)

I'm just not watching as many movies as I did last year, but if you factor in the X-Files rewatch and Olympic coverage, plus my regular television (download) habits, there's still excessive video in my life.

And then for books, this month I read:

Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl
- I don't know why I had it in my head this was going to be dense; it was a light, quick and entertaining read.

Jeff Carlson - Plague Year
- I think I liked this, but at the same time I have some mixed feelings. I'm not sure the way it was cut together was the most effective option, and here's the thing - I think it's interesting the way he explored the dark places in us and the brutality of humanity, but the fact is that no one in this novel liked anyone else, and that makes it a lot harder to identify with any of them.

Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers, Ed. - The Darker Mask: Heroes From The Shadows
- I started reading this over a year ago, on a flight home for Christmas, and the thing about short story books is they're easy to put down and come back to a long time later. Overall I thought the collection was kind of uneven but it opens and closes very strong, two of my three favourites are the opening and closing stories - "Dream Knights" and "Housework" - and then in between I really liked "Henchman", among others. I really loved the premise of this collection, and I definitely recommend it.

It was my goal this month to go back to books I was halfway through and finish them, and to that end I made a conspicuous stack of books with bookmarks in them, but in the end only got through the one.

Okay, back to writing now.

Comments

[rhythmsextion]

Writing IS your job! So there!

[cjmarlowe.livejournal.com]

If only it came with bucketloads of $$$. Though, that said, I did in fact make writing my job this month, with set working hours and everything. It wasn't entirely successful, but it's a start.

[rhythmsextion]

That's seriously kind of awesome, actually. And admirable. I wish I had that kind of self discipline.