Bookwormish, first half of 2015

[starfishstar]

Well! I read 45 books in the first half of this year.

I certainly don't expect to repeat that feat in the second half of the year – it had to do with being temporarily unemployed at the beginning of the year, which I very much no longer am – but right in this moment, I'm feeling pleased with myself. Read the last pages of book number 45 right around midnight on the last day of June, so that all seemed very fitting.

Also, looking back I see I've posted 17 fics so far this year (of much-varying lengths and across a range of fandoms), and that's not even counting the 4 more currently in progress on my desktop (one enormous, two quite mini, one collaboratively written and multi-chapter), so I've not exactly been idle, have I?

The original fiction, not happening so much, but instead I've put my time into learning how to properly write songs for the first time, which is incredibly exciting. And I do some beta reading, and I do think I get a better and better eye for what works and doesn't work in writing, the more I look at it from an editor's perspective. So that's a writerly activity, too.

Sheesh. Why do I spend so much of my time berating myself for not accomplishing enough?

Comments

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Ha ha -- to me it looks like you accomplish so much. I guess we all have a different view from inside our own heads...

The songwriting sounds like a lot of fun -- and challenging. If you write something you're happy with, maybe you could post an .mp3 or a video? :)

Eavesdropping on your comment above -- I'll bookmark this post for the book recs. And I'll pass on a rec of my own: Ellis Peters has another mystery series that she wrote before she wrote Cadfael, set real-time in the 1950/60s/70s but still in the Midlands. The first one I read, thanks to gilpin25, was Black is the Colour of my True Love's Heart, which is not first in the series chronologically but is set at a folk-music festival/course, so it hooks up to the songwriting? But seriously, I was kind of intrigued by how different Peters's narrative voice is in the two series. The language is more ornate in the modern series, and there's actually an omniscient narrator, which I think actually works (for a change).

And, I know what you mean about writing and editing sort of building on one another! Good luck with the fics -- looking forward to see what you've been working on.

[starfishstar]

Ha, oh, that's nice to hear! Especially because when *you* post a list of things you plan to accomplish in a weekend or a break, I find myself thinking, oh man, I'd be lucky to pull off ONE of those! I mean, I certainly post a lot of fic, but sometimes I feel like I'm not accomplishing much in any *other* part of my life... Not the case right now, though! Working a lot – coordinating a children's arts program – and it's really, really fun.

Songwriting, yeah, I could post something! Don't think I have any recordings at the moment, but eventually.

Book recs! Neat, thank you, I'll note down that Ellis Peters book. And these were only even my recs from this quarter of the year; last quarter were
here. (I see I accidentally ended up with "Because of Winn-Dixie" in both – ah well!)