The Words: 1700 words total for the day, much smoother than yesterday. I had more free time this evening and did a 15-minute sprint to start with, using the Sprinter site. Then I switched to word goal instead of time and set it for 700 words, since that’s how far away I was from the daily goal of 1667 words and called it a day.
The Story: Garend has made the arduous decision to go to Newland. He’s finally been enticed enough by the person who came from there to try to convince him to go back with her. He’s not exactly happy about it, though, since he feels sad (and not a little guilty) leaving behind some people who had become special to him. But the benefits are too good to pass up.
I think that tomorrow I’m going to have to finally dive into Newland, which I’ve been avoiding, and not just for the last 4 days. For years, really.
The Words: 1900 words total for the day, which felt like a miracle. I did a 15-minute sprint that was a little more distraction-filled than usual and ended with around 750 words. It was getting late, and I considered leaving it at that, eating up a lot of my first-day lead. But I pushed myself to start another sprint, figuring I’d at least get another 700. Fortunately, I got onto a roll and wrote over 1100 words in that 15 minutes, which put me past the 1667 daily goal!
The Story: Garend is beginning to weaken, not because he actually wants anything to do with the stranger that he’s at least starting to get to know, but because he’s finding himself more and more intrigued by the idea of being able to visit Newland. But he can’t just visit Newland—it will require a commitment that he isn’t yet willing to make.
I definitely feel like I’m stalling, but then I remember that it’s only day 3, so I have plenty of time to flounder through writing about Newland.
I read 15 books last month, another higher-than-average month, with a page count only barely lower than last month. It’s been a good stretch of reading for the last 3 months, but that will come to end in here in November, as I spend more time writing and less time reading. With my current rate of listening to audiobooks, though, the number for November might not dip as low as it has when I did NaNoWriMo in the past.
This list includes 3 ARCs and 3 re-reads. My favorite book from October was Sunrise on the Reaping. I started 2 series, continued 4 series, and finished 2 series. My ever-changing short list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.
I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads. Despite my almost too-long TBR list, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.
The Words: 1500 words total for the day. I’m not going for more than par every day this month, but I didn’t expect to come in shy of 1667 so early in the month. Today was a full day, though, and I didn’t get to writing until late, so I’m happy with what I got from the 2 15-minute sprints I did this evening.
The Story: Garend has a lot of questions for his visiting stranger about Newland, but she’s not really giving him the answers he’s looking for. She is, however, giving him enough to be intrigued and at least consider leaving Pithea and going to Newland. Considering that my plan for this month’s writing was to actually show Newland, it’s taking me a while to get there, but that’s okay. These discussions are good for me to get down anyway.
Okay, so it doesn’t roll off the tongue like NaNoWriMo does, but oh well. I am tracking my progress with a challenge called Novel November, but I’m not particularly attached to the name or the site (which is just a sales site for some kind of writing tool). So I’m making it my own this year.
The Words: 3632 words total for the day. I started right at midnight just like old times (it’s only been 3 years since I did this last, but man did it feel like longer) and did 2 15-minute sprints before going to bed. That got me to 1800 words, which was already more than the one-day goal of 1667. Then couple of sprints this evening–one 20 minutes and one 15–got me the rest.
So far I’m using my Freewrite Alpha, which is new since I last had much to actually write (mostly I’ve been doing revising work for a while now), so it’s taken some getting used to. But I do love the mechanical keyboard feel and sound.
The Story: Up until a week ago, I had no idea what I might write this month. I thought I’d end up just freewriting with prompts every day. So when my husband gave me a brilliant idea last Sunday, I only had a week to think about it. But in truth, I didn’t need to do any planning. I’m basically just writing about a side character in the book I’m currently revising to hopefully publish within a few months, “Power,” who has a story arc that takes him out of the book and onto his own adventures. What happens to him doesn’t really come back into play for a long time, and it’s not front and center in any of the future books I have planned. But my husband suggested I write about what he gets up to in a far off land that will be front and center in a later book. And since that gives me a chance to explore that place that so far has been a fairly nebulous future idea, I jumped at the idea!
So today I wrote about Garend, who has had a visitor from a stranger that wants to be part of his life. The stranger told him of a far-off land (we’ll call it Newland for the sake of avoiding potential spoilers) that, though he wants nothing to do with the stranger, he can’t help but be intrigued about.
Garend, who overall has a minor role in “Power” came out a lot more in my writing today, and apparently he’s a man who holds a grudge. Who knew?
Total word count: 3632
And in honor of November 1st, because even if it’s not really NaNoWriMo, the NaNoMusical still showcases the spirit of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Plus, I can’t help but love spreading the NaNoMusical love, so here is episode 1!
Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew About the Bible by Michael F. Bird
My rating: 3 / 5 Genre: Christian nonfiction
In this book, Michael F. Bird explains how the modern Bible came to be, the need to take it in its proper context, and other nitty gritty details about the Word of God. It’s purported to be accessible to everyone, which means the fact that I struggled to understand some portions of it make me feel kind of stupid. Really, though, in a lot of ways it was similar to many other more intellectual, theologically deep books I’ve read, though not all the way through. Still, it makes me wonder why so many reviews talk about how easy it is to read.
As for the content, some aspects of this book were nothing new for me while others were quite new. For example, I’ve never before heard that the apostle John, the author of the 3 epistles named John, and the John who wrote Revelation might not all be the same John. My concern, though, lies in this book being read by new Christians or those who aren’t very strong in their faith. Even I, who 100% believe the complete accuracy of the Bible and the ability of God to protect His Word as it was handed down over the millennia, found myself beginning to question how accurate what I read can be when Bird gets into the details about how we got the Bible. Maybe that’s because he never quite touched on God’s sovereignty, that He had the power to guide the men who wrote, translated, edited, compiled, etc. the Bible and keep it intact to His wishes. On the other hand, He hasn’t stopped some translations and paraphrases from coming out that water down the truth, so therein likes the concern that this book could actually lead some people to question the Bible as a source of truth. His comments about learning about the historical and cultural context of the different parts of the Bible were intriguing though. I have no plans to try to read Josephus now, but there are more accessible options that I plan to look into. Overall, I can see the merit in this book, which my husband, who read a couple of chapters of it for one of his pastoral training classes, recommended to me, but I am not sure I’m the right audience for it. But I’m not really sure who is, since people who are newer to Christianity might not be able to follow some of it or might actually become confused about the authority of scripture and more mature Christians likely already know much of what is contained within.
Then on the way home from church this past Sunday, I was telling my husband about a conversation in that same vein I’d had with a fellow writer that morning, and he low-key told me that he had an idea for what I could write. Now, my husband has been a huge help to me with my writing endeavors in various ways in the past, but the way he said it, I figured he was going to make some joke or give me some random, outlandish story idea (it wouldn’t be the first time). But instead, he said 4 words that left me speechless for a moment…and then got me talking it through for at least 5 minutes (major external processor here). By the time I was done brainstorming, I was sold!
So all of that to say: I’m in! I’m not trying to be coy in not saying what those 4 words were, but at best, no one will understand what they mean, because they directly relate to the book I’m currently getting ready to publish. And at worst, they’d be a little bit of a spoiler for that book.
I am still trying to work out how to navigate and use the site that I am currently planning to use for this (ProWritingAid). And I found out even more recently that Freewrite has their own NaNo-like challenge. Since I own a Freewrite and plan to use it for much of my writing, I suppose that means I’ll be participating in that challenge by default. At least that gives me a chance to check out more than one of these types of programs at the same time.
Even if this isn’t NaNoWriMo and the community is probably pretty scattered, I still plan to blog through the month about my progress. I’ve really enjoyed doing that in the past and also like being able to look back at it in later years. I’ll start writing at midnight (thankfully November 1 is on a Saturday this year, making that much easier) to get some words in before I go to bed and see what kind of a headstart I can get. I’m really excited to get back into this!!
Are you a past Wrimo? Whether yes or no, do you think you might participate in some kind of novel-writing challenge this November?
After their big win in Mr. Lemoncello’s escape game, Team Keeley is challenged by basically every kid in the country. They all want their chance at stardom (starring in commercials for Mr. Lemoncello games) and are unhappy that the contest was so localized. So Mr. Lemoncello grants them their wish, because hey, that means he gets to create more games! The top teams in each region of the country are chosen and invited to Ohio to compete for full college scholarships—against Kyle’s team. The only problem is that Kyle isn’t so sure he’s up to the challenge this time.
I read and reviewed the original book (see review here), so this review is less about the story and content than it is about the graphic novel format. That being said, I enjoyed the story a little more this time than the previous, and I think that might just be because the graphic novel format lends itself so well to this series! Mr. Lemoncello is such a character as it is, and he’s really brought to life in images. (Maybe they should have gone with animation when they made a movie out of the first book.) It’s fun to see the library itself, as well, and being shown the puzzles feels more natural this way (not that I’m complaining about Grabenstein including visual puzzles in the original books). As for this book, though, I think that fans of the series will enjoy this new format, but I’d imagine that the idea for it is more to encourage kids who don’t care to read regular books to pick up this illustrated version and enjoy the story. Since I had already read the original book, I can’t say for sure how the story will come across to a newcomer, but I think it would be a fun read for 8-12-year-olds!
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Children’s Books for providing me a copy of this book to review.
Castle in the Air Howl’s Moving Castle #2 by Diana Wynne Jones read by Jenny Sterlin
My rating: 2 / 5 Genre: Middle grade fantasy
When Abdullah purchases a magical flying carpet, he quickly meets and falls in love with a sheltered princess who is then snatched away by a very powerful creature. In his attempt to rescue her, Abdullah ends up traveling with a band of magical and non-magical creatures alike.
I’m really sad about this follow-up to Howl’s Moving Castle, which overall was an enjoyable, whimsical book with characters that I fell in love with. Though Abdullah grew on me throughout this story, most of the rest of the characters were kind of flat or ended up being…something unexpected. The story is at least as meandering and difficult to follow as its predecessor, but without as much of the charm I enjoyed in the previous book. On top of all of that, I was really surprised by some of the choices Diana Wynne Jones made with this book. Two overweight women are used as compensation and grateful that at least they’re able to get married. In fact, there was so much degradation of women in this book that I kept forgetting that it was published in 1990 and not decades before AND written by a woman. I’m not normally one to point out this kind of thing, but it really threw me off. Plus, I’m not a fan of insta-love, which is a major point in this book.
Because of the connections to the previous book, there was a point nearish the end that I began to speculate about how Howl, Sophie, or even Calcifer might be included in this story, and that probably ended up being my favorite thing about the book. Of course, being near the end of the story, it just wasn’t enough to redeem the rest of the book. And to explain any further would involve spoilers, but I will at least say that I have read many reviews that lamented how little characters from the previous book were involved here, whereas I was pretty satisfied with it overall (after all, this isn’t a continuation of their story, but a separate story that they are involved in, and I think that’s pretty clear from the synopsis). If you read the previous and loved the characters enough to want to see anything else involving them, you might give this book a try. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s much to recommend about this book. There is one more book left in the series, and since it’s also narrated by Jenny Sterlin (who does a spectacular job), I’m looking forward to seeing if the last book brings back the charm of the first.
A Journey of Words 