I know I say this practically every month, but I cannot BELIEVE we’re already in November. Actually, since it’s taken me forever to get a minute to sit down and do this reflection, we’re almost two weeks into November already. It’s time to take a look at what I got done in October.
If you’ve been following along with the blog then you already know that for 2023 I’ve left myself a big BLANK page of year long goals. The idea was to add to it as things took my focus and watch the page fill. As you may already be aware, I had focused on the newly rejuvenated Short Story Anthology in September and decided to continue that work in October. This means, like everything else when it comes to big goals, there won’t be much progress on this page for a bit. It should take me a while to get the draft fully done. At least, at this pace it will! So, basically, that page looks identical to how it looked when you saw it last.
In addition to my large blank page for goals for the year, I also have monthly ones. These are where I can break things down a little more for myself. In October the only goal was to post the September Wrap-Up, which I did. YAY!
Besides that single goal, I also worked on the short story collection. I managed to fully draft, format, and 1st read through Story 4. Then I turned my attention to story 5. I had a little bit of time to get some words added to that one, but not much.
Overall, October ends with 8,946 words (most of which were book reviews, again) for an average of about 288 per day. As usual, since editing wasn’t my focus, the numbers there are pretty low (only 2 chapters edited) but that’s ok!
Moving on to reading! If you’ve been missing my book reviews, here’s your reminder that those have migrated to alltherightreads.com because that’s where they make the most sense! You can get all of that information over there as well as score yourself some used books at reasonable prices AND sign up for a Surprise Reads Box where we’ll send you custom recommendations in a book box!
I added another 13 books to the log this month, bringing my 2023 total to 119. This breaks down to about 156 pages per day, which is good because I like to be over 100. The oldest book I read this month was published in 2004 and the newest was an advanced reader copy of a title releasing in 2023.
The quick breakdowns of things people often ask …
- 1 Middle Grade
- 3 Young Adult
- 9 Adult
- 3 Mystery/Thriller
- 2 Paranoramal
- 1 Historical Fiction
- 4 Fantasy
- 1 Horror
- 1 Poetry
- 1 Romance
- 4 Independently Published (that’s 30%)
- 3 ebooks
- 8 audiobooks
- 2 paperback
No books received a 1 star. 2 books were 2-star (problematic), 6 were 3-star (more niche than wide appeal), 5 were 4-star (GREAT books if you read that genre) and no titles were 5-star (genre crossing).
So, in conclusion:
- I officially met my 2023 read/review goal for the year (but I’m not stopping)
- I managed to make it though story number 4 in the anthology (which is good because, for a while there, I thought I was going to be stuck on that one forever)
Moving into November I’m hoping to continue working on that short story anthology and forgive myself for NOT participating in NaNoWriMo this year!
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