Skip to main content

Farewelling 2011's Finest and Foreshadowing 2012's (Or, The Week Between Christmas And NYE Is So Incredibly Awkward For Me)


I don't know whether it's recuperating after the mass amounts of shopping, wrapping, planning, cooking and eating associated with Christmas, or it's the contagious apathy associated with one year coming to a close and the inability to do anything substantial before the new one begins. Oh, and everyone's busy or on holidays. So what have I been doing?

Well, nothing. But, I have been vaguely considering the self-publishing route out of partial boredom and partial curiosity and partially because of the recent D Publishing opening (which I personally find too suspect to take seriously).

Anyway, I have two things to do tonight: summarise 2011 and look forward to 2012. And, if we have time, maybe considering the futile art of goal-making. (I'm terrible, trust me)

So, the best of twenty-eleven.


I only finished Laini Taylor's DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE the other day, and let me just say band-meet-wagon. It has been so long since I was just completely enthralled by a book, and it was the first of many which I finished under two days. That being said, Gretchen McNeil's POSSESS lived up to a premise that I held in very high regard for the entirety of its life wrapped in Batman paper before my birthday, and very much satisfied my inner exorcism fanatic.

And, the most coveted of twenty-twelve.




There's a variety in these and there's also a lot of similarity. It goes without saying that come September I will be dying to read the next Karou adventure by Laini Taylor. But we've got angels, curse workers, alchemists (and they better not rip off Fullmetal Alchemist or so help me god), time travellers, and Greek myths. Honourable mentions: CITY OF LOST SOULS by Cassandra Clare, INCARNATE by Jodi Meadows, CLOCKWORK PRINCESS by Cassandra Clare, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green, and, well, Sarah J Maas' QUEEN OF GLASS. 2012 is shaping up to be pretty incredible.

Now, goals. More than ever I'm hesitant to make goals this year because it's HSC year. It's my last year of high school and I've already set my goals for that and they're pretty important. If I'm AWOL through the year, you'll know it most definitely is because of that.

But what do I want to achieve? I want to read fifty books this year, some of which will be school-related texts. I want to try and write once a week for the blog, or write up five posts once a month and schedule them. In regard to writing, I want to comb through the novel and do one last Big Revision and make it exactly how I've always wanted to but never really done, and then I want to query. Properly. 

I have had the most apathetic month, and now I am going to work until my hands bleed for ten months. Ten months until school is done and dusted, until I'm a free woman. I will work and write and study and you can all watch me slowly go mad. 

I hope everyone's had a brilliant year and I wish you all the best of luck for the year to come.

Oh, and guess what? This blog's been up for little over a year now. It feels much longer than that. This last year has just gone on forever, but really, it felt like absolutely nothing at all.

Comments

  1. DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE was totally my favorite book of 2011, too. :)

    And good luck on your revisions and querying!

    Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't wait to see what 2012 brings for you. Keep going!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. My reading goal for this year is 43...one more book than last year. I'm off to what feels like a slow start, but I'll pick up I'm sure!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

D'You Ever Get Those Umpteenth Draft Blues - They're Like the Mean Reds (Or, I Need to Buy HG Wells' Time Machine off Sheldon Cooper)

Say hip hip hooray for absurdly long titles. (And if you didn't catch those references, look here (at 2:50) and here ) I apologise profusely here, boyos. School has been an even greater burden that I'd ever imagined. If I want this mark I've been blabbering about, I am going to need to clone myself. Seriously. It's been a long week since I last spoke to you all and I'm afraid it may be another until I can break above the water. I'm drowning in homework, and core texts that I absolutely despise. In fact, I'm starting to look a little like this: And this glorious situation sparked me with inspiration as gracefully as lightning destroys a palm tree. Inspiration for, well, my blog. *Casts longing glance to manuscript in the corner* As I tried to straighten out my weekend to catch up on all the work I missed when I was sick this week, I realised that Saturday - my devout RETURN revisions day - was being consumed by extra reading/film viewing/art sketching for s

Show Me Yours, a Blogfest

Ooh, look! It's a post. Finally. I am aware that it's been a while, but I've been swept up in the NYE-slash-work-slash-revisions world that has now become my life. Anyways. A while ago, I signed up to a blogfest over at Falen Formulates Fiction , by the charming name of Show Me Yours . I know that to many northern hemisphere natives that it's only the 2nd of January, however, down here in Australia, it's the 3rd. Therefore, I am early. I couldn't find an excerpt from my NaNo, mostly because I haven't touched it since the 1st of December. This blogfest deadline really snuck up on me, and I don't really have time to comb through and then edit a scene, so I'll be lazy and give you an excerpt from my novel, RETURN, which is seizing my sanity and my sleep. It's meant to be 500 words, but I'm feeling rebellious and shall give you 650 or whatever it is. The Grog and Gruel was empty, or almost empty. Nightfall smothered the narrow pub, blackening th

"In 900 Years of Time and Space, I've Never Met Anyone Who Wasn't Important Before" (Problem: Boring Lead, Riveting Supporting Cast)

I received an email the other day from a reader (who wanted to remain anonymous in this post - but we'll call her Sarah) who told me that she was having trouble getting into her protagonist, despite this being her most prominent POV. She is dynamic as many Young Adult characters are, but at the beginning she's anxious and self-doubting because she's in that adolescent phase when you realise everything you know about yourself is completely wrong and you're just starting to discover who you REALLY are. There's not much that makes her like me (or am I kidding myself?) even though I've been in the same position as her. Well maybe not exactly since this is YA SF, but as far as her emotional state goes, I've been through that. But I just feel like she should've developed more by now, and she still feels like a faceless stock character. Bildungsroman is the nature of YA above all, and that relatable trait for the protagonist is necessary. To some extent,