February Round Up

Well, what a month! It only feels like days ago I wrote the January round up, and now here I am writing one for February.

We're finally emerging out of winter and into spring, which is my favourite season. I love the flowers - the bluebells, daffodils, primroses, and the bright, sunny days, the hope and expectation that there is in the air...

But anyway, back to February...

February has been a mixed month. There has certainly been some bad moments, with my laptop crashing and all that - and that just being a bad moment in a rather bad week. But I feel like things are looking up now.

The month kicked off too with the Bloomsbury Harry Potter Book Night at the Waterstone's Piccadilly, which was absolutely awesome and I had the best night.

I've read lots of good books this month too. Some of the ones I loved include:

The Farm Beneath the Water by Helen Peters,
The Sin Eaters Daughter by Melinda Sailsbury,
The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson,
Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens,
and
I Was Here by Gayle Forman -  and more!

Some of the great releases this month too included the new Maureen Johnson book, A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab, and Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (in fact those were the only three books I let myself buy this month... pretty good going, considering that January had been rather decadent!).

I've also done lots of writing - my star chart looks pretty great this month!

not quite full as took picture early!

Since joining the gym at the beginning of the month, I've been getting into a good routine and going to lots of classes and using the gym a lot too.

I'm glad that February is over though and I'm looking forward to March! This blank calender page is rather tempting - another fresh start is always nice, there's so much hope and expectation!

Are you guys glad that February is over?

What's Up Wednesday (4)

Welcome to another edition of What's Up Wednesday, the weekly meme hosted by Jaime and Erin.

 WHAT I'M READING
Over the weekend I started A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab! I've been so excited about this book and I was surprised and happy to find it in the bookshop early! Loving it so far.
  
WHAT I'M WRITING (+ A WRITING GOAL)

I finally printed out Nowhere House and so I've been slowly reading that out and writing down some edit notes. It's amazing how many different things you notice when you're no longer staring at a screen. Still editing SLL too - plus I had the idea for something new *gulp* so I've been making lots of notes for that.

Goal: keep editing!

WHAT WORKS FOR ME

Printing out a draft and reading it out loud! Works wonders. 

WHAT ELSE IS NEW  

This week has been better than last week - I got a new laptop (yay) and all my documents have been restored *phew*, so I'm very happy about that. I have plenty of exciting and rather nerve wracking things coming up this week and next, so it's going to be rather busy and different! Also it's my birthday next week (how did that come round so quickly?!), so that's going to be fun!

See you all next week - I can't believe that February is nearly over. Wow, how quickly time flies.

What's Up Wednesday (3)

Welcome to another edition of What's Up Wednesday, the weekly meme hosted by Jaime and Erin.

 WHAT I'M READING
My reading has slowed down a bit this week. I got a stack of books out from the library, which I'm looking forward to reading, and I really enjoyed reading Gayle Forman's I Was Here. I've also been indulging in some rereading of Famous Five books...
  
WHAT I'M WRITING (+ A WRITING GOAL)

I finished my edit of Nowhere House! Now I just need to print it out and do a proper line edit of it, before sending it to readers, but haven't got round to printing it yet. In the meantime, I'm embarking on a serious edit of Sweet little Lies - and I finally sorted that time line. So now I have those chapters to rewrite - and that what I want to focus on this week! As well as getting that draft of NH printed. 

WHAT WORKS FOR ME

Making a calender of events in my novel! This really helped me to straighten everything out in this story and work out what I needed to change and edit. It also resparked my enthusiasm for this story, so I'm looking forward to working on it. 

WHAT ELSE IS NEW  

What a week. It hasn't been the best of weeks. My laptop finally died, and while *fingers crossed* I'm getting everything back, it's been rather stressful - and I'm glad I had saved my current WIPs onto a USB stick. Phew. And that's just been the icing on the cake of a rather stressful week! But at least today the sun has come out and it actually feels like spring, there's that nice smell in the air, so I'm a little more hopeful now...  

What's Up Wednesday (2)

Welcome to another edition of What's Up Wednesday, the weekly meme hosted by Jaime and Erin.

 WHAT I'M READING


I've been reading a lot this week. I've raced through several books including, The Sin Eater's Daughter (soooo good), The Shadow Cabinet, and the The Farm Beneath the Water. And I've just started I Was Here by Gayle Forman - been looking forward to this one! 

WHAT I'M WRITING (+ A WRITING GOAL)*


I'm still plodding on with NOWHERE HOUSE, editing and adding words. I hit 30k, my target, yesterday though, which makes me very happy. I need to get back to editing Sweet Little Lies. Things are much the same as usual!

So this week, hoping to finish going through Nowhere, hopefully add some more words, and maybe start some editing on SLL again. We shall see....

WHAT WORKS FOR ME

The sticker/calender method. I talked about this last week briefly, and I know that others have written about it recently as well, but this week I realised just how quickly I've got used to it/how well it works in encouraging me to do things so that I have stickers on my calender and don't just spend time just messing about online! There's nothing better than being able to reward yourself with a few stickers! 

WHAT ELSE IS NEW 

Last week I went along to the Waterstones Picadilly Harry Potter Book Night as part of MuggleNet to take part in a fun quiz. It was a great night and incredibly surreal! You can read a piece I wrote about the night for MuggleNet here.

A (late) January Round-up

Well, January has been and gone! Who can believe it?

This post is a little late *cough*, considering it's already a few days in February, but I thought I would get this up anyway.

January was the month of many exciting book releases. Some of the best books that I read this month include:

1. The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson
2. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
3. Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders (this wasn't new this month, but it was to me, and incidentally, this book won the Costa Children's Book of the Year prize!).

Plus, these books got released at the end of the month, so they can be included in this post:

1. Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens (adored, but technically I read it in February....)
2. All Fall Down by Ally Carter (ditto)
3. The Sin-Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury
4. I Was Here by Gayle Forman

Writing wise, I have been busy, and my star chart (which has gone amazingly well for the first month is very busy and full. I managed to rewrite and add lots of new chapters to my MG story, Nowhere House, plus I continued to edit my YA, Sweet Little Lies. And, I managed to do some other writing while I was away, which was great and very freeing! So a good writing and editing month on the whole. A good start to the year!

And now onto a new month (since I took this picture it has already begun to fill up, I promise):

January saw a trip to Fowey, which was amazing and I had the best time. I'd never been in January, but I loved it. See some pictures here. Plus, I graduated.

I also joined the gym, so you know, that's good as well. It's certainly been a busy - and good - month. 
This month, I'll get up the end of the month post a little sooner.... Have a good February everyone!

What's Up Wednesday

I've seen this on so many other people's blogs and I've been meaning to start it for ages. What better than a new month? So here goes. Hopefully it'll be a good way of posting something simple every week!

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme created by Jaime and Erin. Go visit their blogs to find out more.

WHAT I'M READING  

I'm currently enjoying ALL FALL DOWN by Ally Carter, which is fantastic so far! I love Ally Carter and so I was very excited to get my hands on this.  I just finished ARSENIC FOR TEA by Robin Stevens, which was amazing. I'm looking forward to reading THE SIN-EATER'S DAUGHTER by Melinda Salisbury later this week! Plus, I've got the new Neil Gaiman to read. So many treats and so many fabulous books are being published at the moment. 

WHAT I'M WRITING (+ A WRITING GOAL)

I'm currently editing, editing, editing. Which I do enjoy, but sometimes I just long for the excitement of a first draft! 

Currently, I'm trying to focus on two different projects (after being sidetracked last week by another old project, which I read through and made notes for). Trying to focus this month on my middle grade story, NOWHERE HOUSE, and a YA project, SWEET LITTLE LIES.

Writing goal for the week: sort out the timeline for SLL and continue editing/making notes on NOWHERE. 

WHAT WORKS FOR ME

At the moment, I'm remembering that I can't do everything at once and that drafts don't become perfect with a click of the fingers! For now, what works for me when editing and trying to get into the flow of it is reading through a draft, adding small bits as I go and making notes about how to extend/change things, make a list of things to work on, and go through the draft, addressing each one by one. For example, with SLL, the next thing I'm going to address is the timeline! 

WHAT ELSE IS NEW

Well, it's Harry Potter Book Night this week (tomorrow at the Picadilly Waterstones), which I can't wait for. Rather nervous too about my role, but it's going to be great. Can't wait! 

Plus, I joined the gym last week! Oh yes. So I'm getting into a good routine and hoping that my foot doesn't give up on me again. All in the name of getting ready to go windsurfing again!

Hope you enjoyed my first What's Up Wednesday. See you all next week!