Of books, writing, and life in general
So, on a whim, I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month is exactly what it sounds like – a whole month of novel writing. For the whole of November, participants (attempt to) work on a 50,000-word novel.
YEP, IMMA TRY TO WRITE A FRIGGIN’ NOVEL THIS MONTH, FOLKS.
Holy buffoonery, Batman.
I used to do writing challenges at my now defunct writing blog. This is a repost of one of my writing challenges from over two years ago. The writing prompt was to make a list of alphabetical advice. After I wrote the post, I realized that the tips or advice I wrote were things that I try to go by or would give to myself. Check them out.
Last month I decided that I should keep a fitness journal this year. I was kind of obsessing about the Blogilates Fit Journal – which looks pretty cool (though it’s too structured for me and would probably be wasted on me) – and I was thinking maybe keeping a journal might help me be more consistent, so I decided to transform one of my unused notebooks into a pseudo “fitness journal.” I selected one with unlined pages and started logging in my workouts.
I was able to log in a few workout sessions before my whole fitness journal plan went kaput. Hah. It was around the time that Carpet Head gave me this “Wellness Datebook” by The Spa. I was ecstatic when I got it because it meant I can use it instead of the unlined notebook and save the other one for whatever mighty writing ventures I can think of in the future. Haha. I copied my records of my previous workouts into the datebook and that was the last time I opened it. HAH. I stopped working out days before Boracay Open and still haven’t started working out again days after Boracay. I know, I’m terrible.
Anyway, I think my grace period has ended and I should be starting my workouts again so I’m hoping to revive this “fitness journal” thing this month.
To jumpstart this “revival,” let me tell you a little bit about The Spa Wellness Datebook and what’s in it.
I was hesitant to do a post like this because it seems I write down the same goals year after year and I never get them all done. However, I was reading an email newsletter from The Creative Penn and she mentioned blogging about her goals for accountability purposes, so I thought maybe I should do that, too. Maybe if I do the same thing I’d feel more motivated to work on my own goals and maybe get at least half of them done. Hah, we shall see. But then the start of a new year always makes me feel positive so here is my list of things for 2015:
I like books and I like movies and I’m not one to make a big fuss when books are made into movies. I like seeing the differences between a book and its film adaptation. Sometimes I like the book more and sometimes I like the movie version more. It’s not that big of a deal for me when a movie (or the book for that matter) fails miserably to meet expectations. Sure, I get disappointed but I try to be cool and be all “my hair don’t care” about it. Honestly, it’s much easier to move on from a bad movie than when a movie turns out to be just as epic (or more) than the book or the other way around! Now, epic things like that stay with me for a long time. You know what I mean. ;)
So, for the next 31 Days, it’s all going to be about books and their movie adaptations. Every. Single. Day. Hopefully. That’s the plan. I hope I don’t miss a day. Yayyyy..
You can probably guess from the accompanying image what that topic is, but let me just regale you with how I came to that decision.
For the past couple of days I’ve been racking my brain for a topic that I can write about for 31 Days in October.
I went to the 31 Days site, checked out some of the topics that people wrote about last year, and found some really good starting points like lists, letters, favorite things, movies, books, and many other cool topics.
I have stopped using Feedburner for my RSS feed and email subscriptions.
If you’re subscribed to this blog via email, you don’t have to do anything from your end! You will simply notice a change in how new posts are being delivered to your inbox and in the appearance of the emails themselves. I am now using Mailchimp’s RSS-to-email service and it’s configured to look for new posts thrice a week and will send email updates ONLY when there are new posts.
So the question that’s been on my mind lately is this: Am I still a book blogger if I haven’t been reading or reviewing any of the books I’m supposed to be reading and reviewing?
Last Friday I was all, “Have a good weekend, people. Read a book.” on Twitter and all weekend I was having a hard time getting back to the book I’ve been “currently reading” for weeks now. And it’s a pretty exciting book, too, with a really kickass female heroine, and I was having a hard time getting back to it. I finished it finally at the last hour. Yay for me, but then I still have tons of books to go.
I’m kind of stuck. And I suck because I’m kind of stuck.
So just got an email from myself from May of last year via futureme.org. I completely forgot about writing this letter and it just made me smile right now. Here is what the Me in May 2012 had to say to the Me today.
Well, well. I sent this around the time when I was just starting out with the whole freelance thing. I love that I was so positive and eager! Looking at the five points mentioned in my letter, I assess my current score to be about 2.5 out of those five. I don’t feel so bad about that though.