Summer Wrap Up

School is back.

Hello, junior year of high school.

Goodbye, amazing summer.

I don’t hate school or anything–once I get into it, I actually enjoy it–but the sudden switch from laziness to forced productivity is a lot to handle. Acclimating to new teachers and new classes is also hard in the beginning, and I’m ready for everything to settle into the usual rhythm.

But less about school, more about summer. I set myself eight goals at the beginning of summer, and I met almost all of them. Here’s a look back at what I accomplished.

1. WRITE

I totally succeeded at this one. I added 30,500 words to my WIP over the course of nine weeks, bringing my total up to 83,800 words. I have to say, this is better than I ever expected from myself. I’m getting close to the end of my second draft, and I have everything left that I need to write plotted out. I am so ready to write THE END on the last page.

I didn’t write short stories, but that’s okay. I wrote a few poems, some of which I shared here.

Most of all, I’m proud that I kept writing, and that I wrote scenes that I actually enjoy. Of everything that I added this summer, I like most of it, and my self doubt has decreased from “crippling” to “mild.”

2. Read 20 books

I read 21!!! YAAAAY.

• The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas
• Firefight (Reckoners #2) by Brandon Sanderson
• The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler
• P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
• The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1) by Michelle Hodkin
• The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
• The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2) by Michelle Hodkin
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich
• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
• Aces Up by Lauren Barnholdt
• The Thief (Queen’s Thief #1) by Megan Whalen Turner
• The Queen of Attolia (Queen’s Thief #1) by Megan Whalen Turner
• The King of Attolia (Queen’s Thief #1) by Megan Whalen Turner
• A Conspiracy of Kings (Queen’s Thief #1) by Megan Whalen Turner
• When Lightning Strikes (1-800-WHERE-ARE-YOU #1) by Meg Cabot
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

My favorite new read: The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

Most surprising read: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Favorite reread: The King of Attolia (no competition, since it’s my favorite book ever)

3. Keep blogging (at least three posts a week)

Yep, did this one too. I had a total of 37 posts! I can’t say much more on this one, besides that I maintained my goal of writing (in numerous different forms) and that summer laziness never took over.

4. Spend time with friends

CHECK. I hung out with friends a lot, more than I expected I would. Lots of trips to Coffee Bean, lots of lunch hang-outs, lots of good times were had.

5. Catch up on TV shows

I sort of succeeded? I caught up on Doctor Who (season 8), but I didn’t watch the most recent season of Once Upon a Time. On Netflix, I finished up How I Met Your Mother (the ending was whatever…I cried but felt like the last season was completely unnecessary for that pre-planned ending), and started watching White Collar. I’m a few seasons in, and while it isn’t amazingly well written or intense, it is fun to watch.

6. Learn ballet

Well, I had to do this one. I had a ballet summer school class for PE credit, and it was a great experience. I remain loyal to my first love, fencing, but I can definitely see myself taking another class if It fit in my schedule.

7. Finally get my drivers permit

WHOOPS. Nope. That didn’t happen. SSSHHHH

8. Enjoy myself

SUCCESS. I had a really great summer. Lots of new experiences, lots of fun times with friends, lots of relaxation.

Also, my sister made us both amazing steampunk fairy costumes for San Diego Comic Con. Check out her blog here!

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How was your summer? Did you accomplish your goals?

To Read (Quickly), Or Not To Read (Quickly)

Hey guys! My summer is already two and a half weeks old and I’ve settled into my usual summer routine. Laziness abounds. Yay! But I’ve also been doing a lot of reading (though not as much as I probably should), and it’s gotten me thinking about how differently I read books during the school year and during the summer.

When I read books during the school year, I read them in small chunks whenever I have time: when I’ve finished my classwork, after a test, in a loll of teaching. I sometimes read books after school, though I’m usually doing homework or watching TV. I’ll usually pick up books for a few hours on the weekend. This ends up with me taking about a week to read a book, depending on how “into” the book I get and how much free time I have on my hands. The story is interrupted by lessons and homework; sometimes I only have time to read a page before I have to refocus on school. Climactic moments are splintered across days, never read in their entirety. Some part of a scene’s glory falls through the cracks, it seems, when I have to wait an hour between someone firing a gun and the other person dodging the bullet. 

But during summer, my reading style completely changes. I end up reading books for hours without pause, reading more quickly and intensely. Often, I’ll power through a book in one sitting, with breaks only for meals (though I can read through those often) or running errands. I love this style of reading. I get completely immersed in the story, never coming up for air. I don’t have to put the story down during key reveals or climactic moments–there is barely a second between the trigger being pulled and the hero dodging out of the way. Little details stick out to my mind and link together, never forgotten because of the pace at which I consume the story.

But I often wonder, looking back, if reading books so quickly hurts my appreciation of them. 

The problem with reading a book in a matter of hours is that I stop remembering specific scenes or details. When the entire story is crammed together into a morning, individual scenes stop mattering. Everything blurs together into a tidal wave of plot, and though I get the powerful rush of the story crashing over me at once, I sometimes feel like I’m overlooking the great little scenes and details of books. When I am forced to read slowly, only a scene at a time, each scene is a lot more important in my mind than when I let myself read quickly and continuously.

During breaks from school (whether that be winter break or summer break), I end up reading lots of books quickly and close together. Do I enjoy the process? So much. But when I think back to the books I read this way, my memory of them is vastly different from my memories of books I’ve read slower. My recollection of books I’ve sped through is not complete: just a few major plot points, a couple scenes or characters that I loved, and an emotion tied to how much I enjoyed the book. Also, if I read books that are similar, (lots of Chicklit, for instance), the novels themselves blur together in my mind. Books I read slower have more thoughts attached–simply put, I remember more of them.

So is reading about the enjoyment in the moment, or the ability to remember what you read and get pleasure from flashing back to beloved scenes? Does reading a book in one sitting give it power or detract from its message? Are books a collection of chapters, each to be enjoyed in their own time, or a continuous plot to be ideally devoured in one sitting?

What about you? Do you read “too quickly” or “too slowly”? How do you like to break up your reading, especially when you have a lot of free time?

My Goals For This Summer

Today is my last day of school. As of now I am FREE! (No really, I scheduled this post to go live one minute after my final bell rings.) Here are my goals for this summer, both relating to this blog and in my personal life.

1. WRITE

I can’t stress this one enough. I need to get back into writing poetry (which I kind of dropped recently). I want to get better at writing short stories and maybe enter a content or two. And I absolutely have to work on (and finish?!?!) my second draft of my WIP, Devil May Care. I haven’t worked on it in two months, but the last time I really got into writing it, it went well, so I hope I can get that productivity and confidence back, for two months at least.

2. Read 20 books

This is the goal I set myself last summer, and I think it will be a good goal for this summer as well. I haven’t been able to read as much this year as last year, but without school, hopefully I can at least catch up a bit in my overall total. I also really need to start working on my reading challenges (I haven’t even started some of them yet!).

3. Keep blogging (at least three posts a week)

Sometimes, when I have a lot of free time, I basically cease to be productive. I know this about myself. This summer, I want to make sure that I keep blogging, because I know at some point I’m going to get lazy and stop writing new posts. I’m setting a goal of three posts a week, though hopefully I will have closer to four. I also want to focus on getting some more original content, like discussion posts, and posting more of my writing, instead of just doing Top Ten Tuesdays and book reviews.

4. Spend time with friends

This one doesn’t tie into my blog, but I need to write it down somewhere. I love my friends, but last summer I didn’t really organize any get-togethers, and by the end of summer I was regretting it. This summer will be friend-heavy, even if it means I don’t read or write quite as much as I would have otherwise.

5. Catch up on TV shows

Once again, this one isn’t directly blog related, but I haven’t watched the new seasons of Doctor Who or Once Upon a Time, and I really want to. Also, I haven’t been able to go on the Geek section of Pinterest for months, and I need that back in my life, spoiler free.

6. Learn ballet

I don’t actually have a choice about this one. I’m taking ballet at a local community college to get PE credit for high school. I waved my second year of (required) PE last year to take journalism instead, and I have to make it up. Hopefully, this will be a good experience, though doing three and a half hours of dance four days a week for a month will probably leave me exhausted.

7. Finally Get my Drivers Permit

I started this last summer. I am so lazy in this regard. I have like one chapter of online drivers ed left and I just need to do it, but it is sooo boring. Honestly, I don’t really care, but the people in my life want me to be able to drive so…it’s on the list

8. Enjoy myself

Sometimes, during summer, I feel like I’m wasting my precious weeks away from school if I just read a book for the whole day, binge watch TV, or do nothing. I have to remind myself that I enjoy doing those things, and they help me relax–and that’s all that matters. Summer is about relaxing and having fun, more than anything else.

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What about you? What are you summer plans? Are they they same as mine?

May Wrap-Up–Summer is Here!!!

I have three days of school left. THREE DAYS GUYS. I’m so ready for summer. I’m shaking over here.

May was a good month, I guess. I honestly can’t remember much of it; I think I’m in shock. School is taking one last swing at me before it ends. My first AP exam, finals, lots of end of the year projects, yearbook signing–I’ve been busy.  But there was some good news: I found out that I am going to be the Arts and Entertainment editor for my school newspaper! I’m really excited to take on the role.

In terms of this blog, I could definitely feel my hectic schedule getting in the way of my blogging. I only had 14 posts this month, while I had been close to 20 posts in recent months. Still, I managed to keep reading and blogging despite the craziness, so that’s something.

Most of my posts this month were book reviews. I reviewed six books this month (all links lead to my reviews). After reading some fantasy-esque books (For Darkness Shows the Stars and Graceling), I got into the mood for cutesy romance and read a strong of contemporary romances. My favorite that I read was Since You’ve Been Gone, followed by my childhood revisit All-American Girl and the book I still have mixed-feelings about, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. Getting back into the fantasy genre, I just finished The Burning Sky, and I will write a review for it sometime in the next week (it was pretty darn good, I have to say).

In English class, I finished To Kill A Mockingbird (though we started it all the way back in March!!!) and read the extremely powerful memoir that is Elie Wiesel’s Night. I’ll post a review for Night when I can get my thoughts in order about the beating my emotions just took at the hands of some of the most poetic writing I have ever read. And to honor the end of my AP European History saga, I ranted about the horrible textbook that I endured.

In terms of other blog posts, this month was not my best. I took part in two complementary Top Ten Tuesdays: Top Reasons I Won’t Read A Book and Top Ten Things That I Look for in Books. I also discussed the virtues of different types of bookstores and rambled for a bit about the challenges (I imagine) translators face when translating novels. I got some new books–though I haven’t started reading them yet.

In terms of writing, this month was straight-up awful. I published one poem on this blog, and I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t one of my better ones. I didn’t touch my WIP (which I also didn’t touch last month…). I really am itching to write, but school keeps dragging me away. (THREE MORE DAYS, PEOPLE!)

At this point, I’m trying to be optimistic about summer. I’ll have a post in the coming days about my goals for this summer (one of which will needless to say be to WRITE). I hope you are all having a great beginning of summer, and for those of you with finals to deal with–GOOD LUCK.

I Really Should Be Editing My Novel…

Yeah, I should be editing my novel.

You know what hasn’t happened in the last week and a half? Me, editing my novel.

Great.

Editing is boring. And stressful.

A lot like school. Which I’m trying to avoid.

Right now, I’m breaking down my novel into specific scenes and then keeping a detailed account of what happens in every scene of the book in an Excel document. It looks like this so far:

 

That’s not all of it. And I’m only a third of a way through the book.

Every box is a specific moment. Usually a lot of them come together to make what a reader would consider a “scene.” They are color coded based on how confident I feel about the plot/writing showcased in that scene, and how much they have to be rewritten. The large column on the left contains my notes for how scenes should be rewritten.

It’s complicated. But that’s what happens when you wrote an entire book without an outline. You pay for it later in the form of extremely boring Excel documents.

This may look like a waste of time, but it isn’t. I’m basically inverting the entire plot of my novel, changing how the romance plays out, making side characters play greater roles, and trying to make my main characters more alive and complex. Just knowing what I wrote the first time is the first step to completely revamping it.

My goal for this summer was to finish editing Devil May Care. That’s not going to happen. I got out of school June 3rd. I go back to school in a month, on August 11th. It’s crazy!

Meanwhile, in my last month of free time, my Speech and Debate club at school is holding practices, I’m supposed to be doing DriversEd online, I’m trying to keep up with this blog, keep up with current events (for Speech and Debate as well as for myself), read tons more books, go to fencing classes, hang out with friends, spend time with my family, sleep and breathe.

Editing is feeling like an impossible task, when vying for time against the rest of those obligations.

I knew it would be hard. And I knew summer would fly by. But this week is the halfway mark (I think, that might have been last week) of my summer vacation.

I feel like I haven’t really accomplished anything. And I know that next year is going to be super hard, with my first AP class and pre-calc on my plate, so editing will be forced to hold even less of my time and attention.

I still have four weeks of my summer. I just have to actually use them.