TBR/TBW: August 2023

Salutations, ReaderPeople! Just to catch you up on the Filling-in-the-Gaps TBR, I've read the books for 1973 and 1980 and have switched out 1984's book several times but have finally settled on Dragons of the Autumn Twilight. I might end up switching out 2023 for a poetry book, depending on how the next two novels go. I'm going to update my Goodreads once all the books are done, filling in those gaps.

I'm also going to sideswipe the GarbAugust reading event (do the prompts for each week but skip the bingo, etc.), possibly reading Alan Dean Foster's Krull for week 3 (novelization or book by famous person). I'm going to have to locate books for the rest (Week 1: Category Romance or Men's Adventure; Week 2: Paperbacks from Hell or Vintage Smut; Week 4: Anything Goes)...I'll have to skim Paperbacks from Hell to see if there's anything my weak stomach can handle.

And then there's the writing. I've been finding NaNoWriMo/prompts really distracting lately. My least favorite part of writing is taking the pile of text badly in need of revision and doing...the...revision. I avoid it with another shiny pile of terrible text.

My solution? More shiny text! Part of the goal of GarbAugust is to remind you what drew you to reading in the first place, maybe to shake you out of the mindset that reading is merely a sport of wordcount or books completed and I'd like to give myself a writing goal that pushes me to a finished short novel. My goal for the month of August is to produce a 50K to 75K story (23 chapters, beginning, middle, and end) that incorporates my interests in dead mall content, portal fantasy, and walking. The ultimate goal is for a picture of the printed, completed novel to appear on this blog before October 1st.

Many happy summer wishes!

-- Chrissa

Comments

Turn Away

Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm. Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story. Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...

The Soul and The Spine

Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low, eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...

A Single (Terrible) Poem

I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies. This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem? -- Chrissa

A Weed on The Curb

Search This Blog