I’m back!
Sorry about taking May off from my regular posts. It wasn’t intentional. The one on the 14th got lost after I spent twenty minutes getting it Just So, so I gave up on it; and then, well, it’s a long story involving a malfunctioning shift key, a couple of time sucking iOS games, sinus problems, PMS from hell, OCD, and anxiety. It’s really a “You had to be there” thing, so I’m not going to even try to recount it.
Oh, and Georgia weather. That’s always a factor in my lack of doing things in the summer. It’s hard to think of anything beyond “Dear fucking gods it’s HOT” some days.
During this time off, I did some thinking and reassessing. Intertwined Lives is on hold for an undetermined amount of time. I’m not completely sure I won’t reboot it entirely. Sorry, anyone who was reading and enjoying it. I was trying to write two different kinds of story with it, depending on what chapter you’re talking about, and even if no one else had complained, I was starting to see the cracks. Next time it’ll be purer slice-of-life, a webcomic without pictures, basically, is what I’m aiming for. Also, my Progress Report posts get, at most, two views and zero comments. There’s no point in spending between fifteen minutes and an hour writing something every three weeks for that. Especially since something almost always goes wrong with the site on the day I write them . . . seriously, typing them seems to trigger bizarre site errors. So the two of you that have been reading those, sorry, they’re going away. I’ve only got one piece of flash fiction I haven’t posted here, but I’m still considering trying to sell it somewhere so it won’t be showing up for a while. So that leaves book reviews as my guaranteed content. I’m not sure yet if I’ll do one a week or one every two weeks. I’ve got 12 left to do before I run out of things I’ve written five star reviews for, so they’re still going to take a few months to go through, whichever way I do it.
Also, I’m not writing reviews any more. Well, I take that back. I still might, especially for self/small press published stuff. I mean I’m not going out of my way to write reviews. I’m not taking notes as I read and shit like that any more. I was getting too caught up in that instead of just relaxing and escaping into a good book. I was also feeling obligated to finish books even when I wasn’t enjoying them so I could give them a fair review. To hell with that. My to-read list on Goodreads has, at this exact moment, 1457 works on it. There is no way I’m going to read every word of all of them . . . especially at the rate I add to that list. Hell, the list isn’t complete anyway. I’ve got books I got at the local used bookstore that I’ve never gotten around to adding. From now on, if I’m not liking a book at any point at least enough to give it three stars, I’m going to quit reading it. If I’m only liking it enough to probably give it three stars, I’m not going to make a point of reading it. It’ll stay on my Currently Reading list until I realize I haven’t touched it in ages and don’t really plan to. Then I’ll mark it Did Not Finish and whether or not it gets a review/stars will depend on why I quit reading it. If it’s just not my cup of tea, then I probably won’t bother. If it’s because of serious flaws, it probably will get a brief review.
Maybe, hopefully, with these changes I’ll be able to concentrate more on my writing and editing because I won’t have the continuous, back of my mind, distractions of worrying that I still need to write a blogpost or write a review.
2 Comments
My to-read list is only around 400 books, and if I’d just accept that some of those books are crap I will NEVER finish (because life is too short to wade through 500 pages of bad grammar in search of a plot that never materializes), I could cut in half easily.
Georgia weather… *shudder* I have only visited Georgia a couple of times, but I used to live in Kentucky, and the summers there are bad enough. It’s like breathing swamp water.
“If it’s just not my cup of tea, then I probably won’t bother. If it’s because of serious flaws, it probably will get a brief review.” If I reviewed every book I happened upon that had serious flaws, I’d never get anything else done. I’ve pretty much stopped reviewing altogether, though, because I got tired of being told my standards are too high. All that demanding coherent grammar and whatnot, plus an interesting and logical plot, when I should be concentrating on whether the main characters are “edgy” enough. *shakes head* (Maybe I should start going out of my way to review more indie novels that DON’T have serious flaws, to help show people that it does happen.)
I haven’t gotten that one. I mostly get “But my editor didn’t find anything wrong with my punctuation/pacing/structure!” from people who don’t know the “Never reply to your reviewers” rule.
I’ve replied to a reviewer twice. Once to correct something that was blatantly wrong . . . he said there was no glossary and there was and since that was only the second review for that book, I thought that was important to point out; and once to thank one for his well done review after he’d written the best negative review I’ve gotten. It had pointed exactly what he didn’t like about the story, didn’t insult me, and was specific enough to show that he’d paid attention.