It never ceases to amaze me when another month comes to an end. I pay attention to the date as we move through the month, I swear I do. But somehow the end of the month always seems to jump out of nowhere and surprise me.
Nevertheless, January is coming to an end and it’s time to reflect on what I’ve actually done this month.
For 2023 I decided not to bite off more than I can chew. If you’ve been watching this blog since the beginning you know I was a pretty serious planner at some points. I had giant year long goals that I was perfectly capable of breaking into smaller chunks for the month, week, or even day. Doing that, I was highly successful.
In 2022, for whatever reason, that all fell apart. I had those goals but I was making shockingly little progress toward them. More importantly, I was feeling increasingly frustrated when I looked at the page and had nothing done toward that goal. I was ignoring positive steps I had made on other projects in favor of berating myself for not working on the goals I’d set back in January. In short, it was not working anymore.
So for 2023 I’ve done something different. I left myself a big BLANK page of year long goals. I’ll add to them when I focus on them and mark them completed when I finish. I’m focusing where I want/need to focus for the month and celebrating wins.
In January I decided to start with the Hitman project edits. They were back from my editor and required my attention. I managed to read through the entire novel again and make the changes suggested by my editor, making the work a lot stronger than it was. Then I sent it back to the editor for another editing pass. Actually, the timing worked out great and the editor has already returned it to me again.
After finishing my round of editing on Hitman I turned my attention to the formatting of the big Fraun project. This has been incredibly time consuming, although I’m enjoying it. I made a little progress on that project but it will need to continue into February. I also had a chance to sit down with my cover designer and hash out some ideas for this one.
All told, I managed to write just over 100 words per day (most of those were honestly book reviews) and edited a staggering 55 chapters.
Meanwhile, while working through my writing projects, I still managed to get plenty of reading done on the side.
I read 13 books in January for a total of 4,447 pages (that breaks down to about 143 pages per day). The oldest book I read this month was published in 2016. The newest was an advanced reader copy of a title releasing in 2023.
Quick Reading Stats
- 1 Middle Grade
- 5 Young Adult
- 7 Adult
- 6 Fantasy
- 3 Contemporary
- 2 Science Fiction
- 1 Romance
- 1 Mystery/Thriller
- 5 Independently Published (that’s 38%)
- 5 ebooks
- 6 audiobooks
- 1 paperback
- 2 hardcovers
Yes, I realize this adds to 14 instead of 13. One book (at the end of the month) was divided between the audio and the paperback to help me finish it quicker.
Of those formats the breakdown works like this:
No books received a 1-star rating. 1 was a 2-star (problematic). 5 3-star (niche but good). 7 4-star (recommended if you read that genre). No 5-star genre-crossing amazing reads.
So, in conclusion:
- Finished with the next round of edits for the Hitman project, putting me on track to get that one published this year
- Made progress of the formatting of the Special Fraun project, putting me on track to get that one published this year
- Met with the cover designer for the Special Fraun project
- Read and reviewed 13 books, 38% of which were independently published
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