Another Year, Another Chapter: 2019 Reading & Blogging Goals

Happy New Year! Well, so far this week we've gone over the books I've read this year, the blog this year, and today we're looking towards what's to come in the new year!

First, let's see how I did with my goals last year. Last year I didn't make a lot of specific goals, but general ideas for the directions I wanted to go with my reading, writing and blogging.

"I know I want to keep doing the same, reading lots of CanLit, lots of diverse literature, and reading even more widely than I do currently, whether that be through characters, setting, language, or genre. And I still want to keep reviewing and promoting books that I think deserve more love."

 For not having a certain goal or anything, I think I definitely did this to some extent. I've kept up my reading of CanLit and #ownvoices and diverse literature, just because that's the kind of books I keep on my lists and look for when I'm looking for something to read. And actually, a couple years ago my goal was to read 40% ownvoices and I wasn't quite there, but this year I hit it! Would love to surpass 40% though. I still want to read more in translation, and more book from non-Western authors. I also want to read some diverse fantasy! I've gotten a craving for fantasy recently and want to discover the different kinds of stories that are out there. There's so much more now than just Western European-based medieval fantasy, I love it.

As for reviewing, I did a bit of that, mostly prodded by books I was sent and stuff, but I want to do more!

"But I've recently got back into writing, and I want to start talking about that more too - including sharing more of my own writing and my thoughts behind that terrifying process."

 This was the second part of my vision for last year: share more writing, including my thoughts behind the process! I did a bunch of creative writing-type posts on my thoughts on writing which was super fun. I'm proud of those posts even if they aren't as popular to a larger audience. You can also check out some classic embarrassing childhood writing if you want too.

Besides these two visions for my blog, I've spent a lot of time this year actually WRITING. Which means I don't blog as much because I'm writing, but that's been really fun. I actually re-wrote two books, and started world-building for another one. I also won NaNoWriMo while doing one draft re-write. Who knew that university and assignments were so harmful to writing productivity??

So, next year! As I've talked about before, I've gone through many iterations of this blog - from fun, silly teen to actually having a vision for what I want this blog to be (see my about page if you're curious). And now this year, since I am done school and can actually have time to do some creative things, I want to commit a bit more to this blog. So here are my goals for next year:

1. Have a schedule, and post at least once a week.

I'm not sure exactly what the schedule will be yet, but I know I want to do way more reviews than I do currently (like more than just when I get ARCs sent to me to review).

2. Commit to Women in Translation Month!

Hopefully I won't be traveling as much this year in August, but even if I am I want to be prepared to actually have reviews and posts and stuff up on the blog! This will also help with reading books in translation and stuff.

3. Do more Local Book Nook posts! 

I also want to do get back to doing Local Book Nook posts. I have a few Local Book Nook posts, but I'd love to have a more extensive collection, featuring bloggers from all over the globe! Contact me if you know of a reader or blogger who might be interested in talking about their favourite local books!

4. Get up to 50% #ownvoices

Like I said, I read about 40% ownvoices (where the character shares the same identity as the author) books this year but I'd love to keep increasing that!

I think that's plenty for now, but please stick around to see what happens around here in the next year and please get involved! I'd love to work with you. Do you have any ideas for the blog this year? What are your favourite kinds of posts? What would you like to see?

2016 Reading Goal Check In & 2017 Goals!

New year, new goals, new look! (The new look is still in progress.)

Anyway, let's see how I did with this year's reading goals...

1. Read diversely! This is always a goal of mine, although it definitely takes work and I can always do better. I especially want to focus on reading what people have called #ownvoices on Twitter, where the identity of the main character is shared by the author. 

I read 19 own voices books this year, about 30% of the books I read... which is pretty good, but I would love to eventually get it up to at least half of the books I read in a year, or more.

2. Read more books by non-Western authors, or with non-Western settings (like, outside the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia). This is really hard sometimes because of language issues, but I know there are books out there! (Also if you have recs for me for any of these, please comment and let me know!)

I read 3 books with non-Western authors and settings, which is... not great. Also, going through my book log, I'm having trouble figuring out what actually counts as non-Western authors and settings, since a lot of books I read are written by authors who have immigrated to Western countries. So what counts as an "international" author? If an author is from Pakistan but moved to the US and published in the US are they an American author?

3. Read more books by indigenous authors, not just written by authors from Canada and the US but outside as well. 

You can see all of the books by Indigenous authors that I read this year here, and as you can tell I did not do super great. Most of them I only read in December. Also I did not read any books by Indigenous authors outside the US or Canada - actually I have no idea where I would find books like that. Anyway, better next year! 

4. Continue to read CanLit! I loved discovering all the great CanLit out there this year, and I'm not ready by any means to be done with it yet!

I read 18 CanLit books this year! I think I'm pretty happy with that. I still want to continue reading CanLit, and I also want to do more CanLit reviews this year! Before you know it, this will be a CanLit blog. I would be okay with that.

5. Read more books with non-American authors than American authors (I failed at this in 2015.)

I was definitely closer this year, but I still was not successful. I read ten more American authored books than non-American authored books. It is hard because whenever I want an easy fun book to read, American books are always the easiest to find... 

Aaand this year's goals! Last year I don't know what I was thinking but I didn't do numbers for anything, so this year's goals will be more specific. 

*~*~2017 Reading Goals~*~*

1. Read 7 books by Indigenous authors, including at least 1 by an Indigenous author not from North America.
2. Read more books with non-American authors than American authors. I will do it this year!! Third time's a charm!
3. Read 3 books that have been translated from another language.
4. Have 40% of the books I read this year be diverse #ownvoices books. 
5. Read 5 books with non-Western settings.
6. Do a reading challenge on the blog! Which reading challenge? Who knows, not me! 

 I will still read a lot of CanLit, but since I did pretty good this year I won't make it a goal. And it's included in goal #2. Hopefully those goals are reasonable and specific enough. We will see.

What are your reading goals for this year? Do you love making goals as much as I do?? 

What's Up WORLD

I have been absent from the blog since... well, it's been a few months (oops). But a lot has happened since April so I thought I would update you. Actually I just saw a few "What's Up Wednesday" posts so I thought I'd do it in that sort of style, although it isn't Wednesday anymore.

WHAT'S UP WITH MY LIFE

100 Islands, Philippines. Yup, I went there. And...got sunburnt.

I'm home! If you didn't know, I spent this past year in the Philippines, doing a lot of cool stuff. But mostly doing stuff like working at an international school in the elementary library and being the main playground supervisor which means sweating BUCKETS everyday because the temperature rarely goes below 30 degrees Celsius. (Seriously, the one week of the year when it gets down to 26 C people start wearing toques!!) If you're interested I could talk a bit more about my experience there, but for now I'll stick with reading and writing unless you really really want to know. :) So, yeah I'm back in Canada and gearing up for starting university in the fall!

WHAT I'M READING

I just finished FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK by Melina Marchetta and WHYYY did I not read it earlier?? I actually tried to read it a while ago because I absolutely ADORE Melina Marchetta, but I didn't feel like reading fantasy. Finally I sat down and buckled up to read it and I'm soo glad I did because Melina Marchetta did NOT disappoint. FINNIKIN is fantasy, but it has so much truth and beautiful story in it and AWESOME characters, which is my favourite thing about MM and the main reason I love her work. Give me a good character and I'm in love. PLEASE go read it because I want everyone to know how awesome Melina Marchetta is!!

WHAT I'M WRITING

Since I didn't have school work to worry about this year (a very weird thing for me...), I spent quite a bit of my free time writing. So only a couple of days ago I managed to finish my third draft of a book I've been working on for quite a while! Actually, pretty much exactly a year ago I said briefly that I'd finished my second draft. So... it takes me a year to write a draft. But anyway, I'm super pleased with this draft and I feel like I'm more on the right track now than I was with my disgusting first draft and messy second draft. I've now sent it out to a few readers but actually if you're interested I'm on the lookout for more critique partners. :) Here's a terrible one-sentence synopsis... 17-year-old Percy Collins used to be invisible, part of the world of invisible people called Unseens, until he was injected with the legendary antidote to invisibility and for the first time in history, it worked on him, thus making him a very valuable person in the Unseen world. (Trouble ensues). Yeah, I've got to work on that. But anyway, if  you want to read it email me at kazuntai101[at]gmail[dot]com. You can also contact me through twitter, @AlyssaSherlock!

MY GOALS

I feel slightly lost now that I've finished my draft, because my goal for so long has been to finish it! I think I'll take a break from any writing projects for a while, and then maybe try to work on writing a good summary. Which is kind of daunting, to say the least, but also necessary because right now when people ask me what my book is about I say "uh... people... who are... invisible..." (And I'm only trying to annoy them a little bit).

WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW

Melina Marchetta! Reading Finnikin of the Rock inspired me to work on my book and finish it. It reminded me a lot of my book, just because my favourite part of the book I wrote is the relationships and the growth of my characters throughout. :)

I am also looking for some new music to listen to, so if you have any suggestions please let me know! I'm also wondering what your favourite YouTube artists/musicians are (because then I can just listen to all their songs on YouTube... haha).

Anyway, I've been away for a while. How are you? What are you up to? Have you posted lately on your blog? (I need to catch up on my blog reading...) Let me know!

The NaNo Mindset or, How to Get Things Done

Hello!! I know, I know, it's been a while. Over a month, actually... whoops. But I figure it's OK that I've been MIA here on my blog, because most people go missing in action during November anyway because of that NaNoWriMo beast.

I didn't do NaNo, although a couple of days before November I was determined to, because I watched this video:

...and I realized that all those excuses Kristina Horner shoots down in that video? Well, those were my excuses.

However, it was a day before November 1 and I barely had an inkling of an idea. As well, I'd decided to make a goal of running 60 miles in November. With the schedule I have, plus running every day, I knew I wouldn't be able to crank out 50,000 words. So I just scaled it back to 30,000 words.

And guess what? I did it! I actually ran 60 miles, and wrote 30,000 words in November. After November ended, I couldn't help but ask myself, how did that happen? How did I manage to write 30,000 words while being as busy I was, especially when I have gotten way less writing done in other months that are way less busy? How does that even work?

What was different?

Then I realized that I had put myself in this mindset. Here are the steps for my personal NaNo mindset:

 

The NaNo Mindset:

Step 1: First of all, I was absolutely, completely determined to make both of my goals. I wasn't wishy-washy about it, like I sometimes am with goals. It wasn't "well, I'll try to write 30,000 words, but if I don't, that's okay too." Nope. It was "I am GOING to run 60 miles, and I am GOING to write 30,000 words."

Step 2: I prioritized. I wrote when I would've done other things, but since reaching my goal was important to me, I made the time to write.

Step 3: I took advantage of every possible time to write. I like Kristina Horner's suggestions in her pep talk video when she shoots down the "I don't have time" excuse. What about those times when you sleep in? Or go watch youtube videos? Or read your book? I actually had lots of time, but I just usually didn't use it for writing. If I had time, using that time to write was the first that came into my head.

So, I definitely think this mindset could work for anything, not just writing or NaNo. You just have to shape your thoughts into a certain mindset so you'll get things done. Convince yourself that not writing (or whatever else) isn't an option.

How was your NaNo, if you participated? How do you motivate yourself to write or get things done?