NYG: Read More!

This is NOT my drawing. I got it off
Pinterest. Not sure if this is the artist,
but here's a link to the Tumblr it was
pinned from (x)

Last year, I read 106 books.


I had spent the last four years trying to work my way to 100 and I finally reached it. I won't talk about that much now, because I've already posted about it on Novel Attraction (Goodbye 2014. Hello, 2015!).

This year, my goal is going to be 120 books.

Now that I've officially completed my goal of reaching 100 books in one year, I was a little hesitant to up the read count. After all, there's only so many books a person can read and I foresee 2015 being a hectic year. However, I'm always up for a good challenge and it's not like I'm going to beat myself up if I don't make it. If I do it, great! If not, I'll try again next year.

Reading is my favorite pastime and has been for as long as I can remember. It is also a major part of my trade. I want to be an author myself and the best way to get better at writing is to WRITE and to READ. So I have to keep striving to do more and to learn more. This is an excellent and fun way to do that.

NYG: Start Blogging More

Since I pretty much gave this resolution away in my announcement post for the series, I figured I would start with this one. 

In 2015, I want to start blogging more.

2014 wasn't a great year for my consistency in blogging. I did 18 posts on my book blog, Novel Attraction, (most of which were posted in the last few days of December); and a paltry 7 posts on this one. I would like to blame this on moving to Seattle and all the challenges that came with getting settled in a new city, but that really only accounts for the first few months after I moved. Honestly, I've just been lazy. 

I love blogging. I love sharing little tidbits of my life and I love writing book reviews. I didn't keep up with it last year because it didn't take priority, but this year I'll do my best to keep it high on the list. I'm not promising a post every week or even necessarily every month, but I'm promising effort, which is really all I can give at the moment. 

2015 looks like it's going to be a busy year for me and I want to share that with you, so hopefully we'll see a little more of each other in the months to come.

New Year's Goals: A Blog Series

My New Year's Kiss was clearly better than yours.
(This pic makes me burst out laughing every time I see it.)

New Year's Eve/Day is one of my favorite holidays. I'm a big fan of new beginnings and blank slates. I love lists and making goals for the future. Every new year, I find myself eager to see what's ahead of me and happy to step into it. It's one of the few times I really feel like an optimist.

Last year, I made five New Year's Resolutions and I completed four out of five of them. I moved to Seattle, I went back to college, I read over 100 books. Though I didn't exactly write 1,000 words every day of the year, I did up my word count/time spent writing each day significantly in 2014. In December alone, I spent 38.75 hours working on my current Work in Progress. The only resolution I didn't make any headway on was Be more forward, which was essentially a Learn how to flirt kind of resolution. Unfortunately, I am inept at that as ever.

This year, I have made a list of 10 Resolutions in my journal, but I'm not going to post them all at once the way I normally would. I have a different plan in mind. Instead of having an intensely long post on those ten resolutions that you'll probably just skim anyway, I'm going to do a bit of a blog series. 

For the month of January, I will be putting out small blog posts on things I would like to get better at or work on in 2015. This will include, but will not be limited to, my actual New Year's Resolutions. I think there are a lot of things I would like to get better at that I won't necessarily make a resolution. There are plenty of small things that are more like reminders to myself than anything else, but I think they're worth mentioning. 

So, let's see where this goes. I think it will help me focus on what I want in the new year and hopefully inspire you to see where you would like to go. Maybe you'll see some stuff you want to work on too. Either way, it'll get me blogging more, which I miss doing and would like to start up again. (And yes, blogging more will be the topic of one of those posts you'll be seeing this month.)

Well, that's all for today. I'll see you soon with the first post!