Sharp Words

Back on January 1st this year, I published my resolutions for 2009. And now, it’s time to review my goals, and set some new ones.

My 2009 goals:

• redesign this blog – FAIL; I need to get a decent header image that I can work from, but my artistic skills are fairly minimal
• write a poem every week – FAIL; I managed just 24 out of 52, although I do have another few ideas bubbling
• finish the first draft of The Secrets of the Library – FAIL; although deliberately so, since I swapped focus onto something else instead
• read at least 6 Booker or Orange prize winners – FAIL; I forgot about this one, although I did read a few more winners and nominees, just not enough
• submit poems or short stories to at least three magazines or competitions – WIN; although nothing much came of the entries, and it’s been months since I submitted anything
• read more poetry – WIN; this was a nice easy goal

I think my 2009 report card would basically say something like Must try harder and Does not live up to her potential. Sentiments that sound vaguely familiar, from back in the day…

Anyway, some things I managed and some I didn’t. And some of these goals are going to be carried through for this year, too, with certain amounts of tweaking for more realistic expectations.

My 2010 goals:

• write 36 poems, 3 each month
• write 75,000 words (excluding NaNoWriMo); more would be nice!
• try to finish at least 2 short stories (I have a couple half-written)
• redesign this damn blog!
• submit poems to at least 5 magazines or competitions
• blog at least once a week, preferably 3 or 4 times (I need to get my groove back), including at least 1 book review per month (January 2010’s will be Jim Murdoch’s Stranger Than Fiction (at last) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

I think these are achievable goals – possibly a few too many of them, but I’m going to strive anyway. I want to feel worthy of calling myself a writer.

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All statistics correct to the time of posting this – further hits and comments on December 31st not included.

Posts made: 74 (including this one) ; 170 in 2008 – I wrote 19 posts in January, but only managed about 1 a week after that.

Most popular posts:

1. Review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (May 15th 2008) – 1712
2. Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (January 29th) – 964
3. Quote of the Day (26/11/08) – 950 – this got a lot of hits from search… it was a quote about adolescence and suffering, and a few notes from me there-on, and probably not what was being looked for

Comments posted: 309 (not including any on this post); 678 in 2008
Spam comments: 7759; nearly 15,000 in 2008, but I changed comment policies back in March to lock anything over a certain age

Books read: 188 + 12 re-reads
118 (63%) were first-time reads; 85 (45.2%) were borrowed from the library or friends; 21 (11.2%) were bought new and 10 (5.3%) bought used.

Book reviews written: 4 (not nearly enough)

Poems posted: 5 (again, not nearly enough, although I wrote a lot more)

Top 10 search terms used to find this blog:

• the book thief review – the book thief reviews is the 2nd most searched term, and the book thief and the book thief by markus zusak are also in the top 10, which explains my top-viewed post
• sharp words - other words for sharp is also in the top 10
• 26/11 quotes – quotes on 26/11 and 26 11 quotes are also in the top 10, which explains the popularity of that post
• misreading words
• affair poems – this is actually down at #12, since there was another search term for the book thief at #11!

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I love buying notebooks. I buy them even when I don’t need them.

The photo shows the notebooks I found in my study. (Which admittedly is a large room, and I don’t think there are too many other notebooks lying around the house; maybe just 3 or 4.) As you can see, I like my notebooks to be hardbacked, or spiral-bound, or preferably both…

Out of the 12 there, 3 have never been used, and another 3 are currently blank because I ripped out the old unwanted scribbles that they had. (I didn’t lose anything meaningful – just Italian vocabulary lists, a few pages of holiday spending, and some old work notes.)

All the ones that have been used have some sort of history. Even the ones that haven’t have something about them. That grey, blue and red striped one in the middle? Bought in Asda for £1 the other week just because I liked the look of it. No idea what I’ll use it for.

The little black one with the inset picture on the cover was a present from a friend 10 years ago, and never used because I couldn’t think of anything worthy enough to put in it.

That little blue plastic-covered one at the front was lost for a long time. When I found it in a box earlier this year, I was delighted to find some ‘lost’ poems in it, written about 7 or 8 years ago.

The brown striped one at the back has brown paper pages which look beautiful but don’t soak up fountain pen ink very well. I persevere though, because that’s my ‘official’ poetry notebook, and I like writing in proper ink with a proper nib.

The purple one with the elastic band and the NaNoWriMo stickers? Well, you can probably guess what that one’s been used for. It’s been my writing and note-taking notebook for a couple of years of NaNoWriMo, but since it’s mostly full, it’s been retired this year in favour of the mostly-white-and-flowery book over on the left.

The little blue one with a dandelion is my log of stuff (food, weight, to-do lists). It’s a journal of sorts, and I think that’s actually where my obsession comes from – the 8 years that I kept a journal, always in a hardback notebook of varying size (I think I got through about 6).

I like notebooks much too much. (And if anyone is ever stuck for an idea for a present for me…)

Anyone else have more notebooks (or pens or other writing paraphenalia) than they really need?

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Susan, bless her, has tagged me with a meme in a most timely fashion. But although I’m supposed to tag people in return, I’m not going to bother; I’m not sure exactly who’s reading this any more. (I need to start networking again, and rebuild my audience.)

Collect the book that you have most handy, turn to page 161, find the 5th complete sentence, and cite the sentence on your blog.

If you mess our mutual friend about in any way, shape or form, Marie McKenna has an accident.

There’s a threat for you! This is from the excellent Belfast-based thriller The Twelve, by Stuart Neville, which I’m re-reading at the moment so I can finally write a review. (Expect one before the end of August.)

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Yes, this is a meme on HelloQuizzy.com (not one of the most distinguished quiz sites out there, but then again, not one of the worst). But it interested me, and my result is one of my favourite fantasy authors…

Katharine Kerr (b. 1944)
-9 High-Brow, -13 Violent, 1 Experimental and -1 Cynical!
Congratulations! You are Low-Brow, Peaceful, Experimental and Romantic! These concepts are defined below.

Katharine Kerr is a US author who is best known for her books about Deverry, the result of a thought experiment of Kerr’s: What if a tribe from the culture of Celtic Gaul had escaped the Romans and moved to another world? The answer is the culture of Deverry, a fantasy world with, among other things, functioning magic, called dweomer. What sets dweomer apart from many other kinds of magic is that it’s a system, with detailed descriptions of how different magical actions are performed by those cunning in it, often reminiscent of new age literature, but actually drawing heavily on as diverse systems of thought as buddhism, the Kabbalah and gnosticism.

Another prominent feature of Deverry is the presence of reincarnation, with parts of the plot (or plots, really) concerning the attempts of various characters to overcome their weaknesses in order not to repeat the mistake they made in previous lives’. All this allows for some rather typical fantasy romanticism, while still allowing a huge amount of plot twists and turns, sometimes making the history of Deverry complicated to the point of resembling a highly experimental suite of novels.

Kerr’s fans are often real enthusiasts and it is easy to see that those who have the brains to follow the twists and turns of Deverry history are in for a journey into great tales of tragedy and destiny.

Read more about my result or take the quiz.

Quite how my similarities to Katharine Kerr might affect my own writing, I’m not sure, since there’s no way I’m aspiring to her cleverness or skill or success. But maybe I can get some inspiration, somehow?

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I’ve realised that I’m boring myself with my own blog. And if I’m bored, what about you poor saps?

Not much got posted during February, and I certainly didn’t get round to writing any of my planned posts. Neither did I get much of my planned fiction-writing done.

So, I’m going to take some time off blogging here (though I’ll probably still stick a personal post up at Bloggo Ergo Sum every now and again, and no doubt I’ll end up posting here as procrastination), and instead, I’m going to try and do a personal Novel Writing Month (MyNoWriMo, if you like). Yes, I’m going to attempt to write 50,000 words during March, completely unsupported. (Although at least March has 31 days.) The word count will be posted over in the sidebar. Shout at me if I’m flagging.

See you ’round…

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