I’ve been trying to read more even while school is in session and I’ve also been curious just how fast I go through books (John claims I’m a slow reader, mostly because he has no patience as I browse and flip through books happily in Barnes & Nobles, Bookman’s, and Border’s). I love to read and here’s just what I’ve been reading in the last few months. After this I’ll try to do a monthly summary. My goal is 48 books this year (four books a month — do-able).

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My birthday was on the first and school has kept me quite busy these past few weeks. While I’ve been writing whenever I have some free time, I haven’t really had time to post much here. I enjoyed my birthday, it was wonderfully relaxing.

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On the writing front, I’m kind of feeling detached to my story. I have vibrant scenes in my head, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet. I’ll write a chapter and send it to my crit group and then write another chapter and send it to the group, and the cycle would repeat itself. And while it helps immensely for the immediate feedback, I was wishing the other day that I had the time to just pump out chapters, maybe even finish it, so I could see the “big picture.” Characterization is probably the hardest thing to write in your story. I would love my novels to be plot-heavy but character-driven — if that makes sense. But it’s hard to do when you can pump out a chapter a week if you’re lucky. I feel like I’m not getting the relationships in my writing across well. *sigh* Usually I can pump out some confidence, but there’s a few things I always feel sensitive about and always question myself. One of them happen to be writing (although I can’t stop just because I may be having an emo-day and saying to myself, “Ohmigod, my writing sucks and I suck and why does it suck?!” ).