July Roundup
Aug. 16th, 2012 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjmarloweWow, I apparently fail at life because I very carefully had this all ready to go for the first of the month and then just completely forgot to post it. For over two weeks. Best laid plans and all. And the reason I very proudly had it all ready to go on the first of the month was because for the first time in ages I actually made my writing goals again. Slightly more modest writing goals than I was working with 2-3 years ago but still. Goals.
In July I wrote 31,244 words and posted two stories in two fandoms (one of which is still anonymous) and finished and began submitting one more. And because I'm posting this late and can do this: as of yesterday, I've written more words in 2012 than in all of 2011. Words themselves are obviously in no way the only measure of success, or even necessarily a very good one in many cases, but they're something concrete that I can track and use to feel like I'm working and moving in the right direction. I know tracking them as closely as I do is a little bit obsessive, but collecting and organizing information like that is something that centres and motivates me, and I have enough data now to understand a little better what the numbers actually mean, and how to read my own trends, which I find really useful. I kind of can't wait to post August's roundup. It's a little bit beautiful to me.
Movies and Books, July 2012:
In July I apparently watched no movies or complete televison series, according to my list. Occasionally I forget to record things, but this actually seems accurate--I watched about ten minutes of several different movies, because my cousin who was staying with us took over my Netflix for the duration of her visit, but I never actually sat down and watched anything. Adding that to work busy-ness in the first half of the month and Olympics towards the end...yeah, it's likely that I didn't watch much.
And as for books:
Rob Ziegler - Seed
Post-apocalyptic exploration of genetic engineering. Very uneven for me, but when it worked, it really worked, especially towards the end.
Matthew Hughes - The Damned Busters
In some ways this was a tremendous amount of fun, but the female characters were so uniformly awful, existing solely to be victims and love interests (and often both at the same time), that it left a bad taste.
Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse
This follows the world during the apocalypse, which is not one cataclysmic event but a slow erosion of everything we know and trust until the world is completely demolished around us and we ourselves are changed with it. Not a comfortable read, but interesting and thought-provoking.
Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312
I could probably write pages about this book, and many people have, but ultimately it was exactly the book I wanted to read when I picked it up, maybe even moreso. It's one of the few things I've read that has handled the hard SF and the sociological SF evenly and on equal terms, and is so staggeringly expansive in scope.
This entry was originally posted at http://cj.dreamwidth.org/12952.html.
In July I wrote 31,244 words and posted two stories in two fandoms (one of which is still anonymous) and finished and began submitting one more. And because I'm posting this late and can do this: as of yesterday, I've written more words in 2012 than in all of 2011. Words themselves are obviously in no way the only measure of success, or even necessarily a very good one in many cases, but they're something concrete that I can track and use to feel like I'm working and moving in the right direction. I know tracking them as closely as I do is a little bit obsessive, but collecting and organizing information like that is something that centres and motivates me, and I have enough data now to understand a little better what the numbers actually mean, and how to read my own trends, which I find really useful. I kind of can't wait to post August's roundup. It's a little bit beautiful to me.
Movies and Books, July 2012:
In July I apparently watched no movies or complete televison series, according to my list. Occasionally I forget to record things, but this actually seems accurate--I watched about ten minutes of several different movies, because my cousin who was staying with us took over my Netflix for the duration of her visit, but I never actually sat down and watched anything. Adding that to work busy-ness in the first half of the month and Olympics towards the end...yeah, it's likely that I didn't watch much.
And as for books:
Rob Ziegler - Seed
Post-apocalyptic exploration of genetic engineering. Very uneven for me, but when it worked, it really worked, especially towards the end.
Matthew Hughes - The Damned Busters
In some ways this was a tremendous amount of fun, but the female characters were so uniformly awful, existing solely to be victims and love interests (and often both at the same time), that it left a bad taste.
Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse
This follows the world during the apocalypse, which is not one cataclysmic event but a slow erosion of everything we know and trust until the world is completely demolished around us and we ourselves are changed with it. Not a comfortable read, but interesting and thought-provoking.
Kim Stanley Robinson - 2312
I could probably write pages about this book, and many people have, but ultimately it was exactly the book I wanted to read when I picked it up, maybe even moreso. It's one of the few things I've read that has handled the hard SF and the sociological SF evenly and on equal terms, and is so staggeringly expansive in scope.
This entry was originally posted at http://cj.dreamwidth.org/12952.html.
