New Year, New Beginnings

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a very enjoyable start into 2016 and may the year bring you only the best of things.

The new year often starts with resolutions of more or less importance that people more or less stick to over the course of the year, or the first couple of weeks anyway. I usually don’t bother anymore because I know I’m not going to stick to them for the most part.

This year however, I couldn’t help but wonder what my new year’s resolutions could be in terms of reading, and penpalling, and so I have decided to make a couple at least.

In terms of penpalling, it’s a fairly easy resolution, or it should be. I have to stop procrastinating and I shouldn’t let myself be distracted by all the shiny books all the time so I can spend more time replying to letters, something I have done very little of in 2015, unfortunately. My mailbox is starting to feel very neglected.

As far as books are concerned, I have resolved to not get any new books until March. Seems doable, right? Right! At least, I hope it is. Alright, let me rephrase that slightly, I’m not going to get any new books I have to pay for in any way. Free deals are acceptable, aren’t they?

Truthfully though, I am, really, going to attempt my best at diminishing the pile of new books that is sitting there unread and crying for my attention. (By ‘new’, I mean all my recent additions, most of which have actually been second-hand.)

As far as reading challenges are concerned, I’m not entirely sure which I’m going to end up doing, though I have two lined up already.
1. Book Charmers Reading Challenge 2016, which is loosely based around the idea posted by Pop Sugar in 2015
2. 12-Month-Classics-Challenge, which I’m doing with Serenity from Book Charmers; an idea we found on You, Me and a Cup of Tea.

We’ll see what more the year will bring.

Happy reading!

The Cocktail Phoenix

National Novel Writing Month

Another month of reckless abandon to the world of words has been survived. I initially wanted to post about this during the month, but November decided to fly by so quickly that I barely managed to get everything done that I wanted to besides writing 50.000 words in 30 days. You know, like sleep, eat, go to work..

NaNoWriMo in a nutshell: the idea is to write a draft, or the beginnings of a draft, of a novel – 50.000 words in 30 days, which comes  down to a daily writing goal of 1.667 words.

The first time I participated, I thought almost 2k a day would be a lot. And it was. But over time, it got easier and once you get the story flowing and the characters talking to you, the words will come pouring out of your fingers, whether you’re typing or writing by hand, whether you’ve planned ahead or are just winging it.

I never plan – every year I tell myself that this will be the year I actually plan my novel a bit so that I know where I’m going with it, but every year it’s the same story. October and then November roll around and suddenly there is no time to plan anymore and I’m just going with my gut. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always a lot of fun to participate, not in the least because the writing community is just great.

So for the sixth time in a row, I have survived this nutty challenge and I am already looking forward to doing it again!

Boo!

With Halloween just around the corner, I figured this would be a nice theme to start off a blog.

It came as a fairly spontaneous decision actually. To create a blog, I mean. Not that I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but I guess I never really had that little incentive that pushed me from thinking about a blog to actually writing one. The decision was taken off my hands when a group of lovely ladies I met on GoodReads thought it’d be a great idea to start a book blog together (Book Charmers) and I simply couldn’t resist. And while I’m here anyway… I figured I might as well try and set up my own blog.

About what? Well that is a good question!

I’ll let you know, sooner or later. Or maybe it’ll just be a mix of whatever crosses my mind.

Anyhow, thanks for stopping by!

The Cocktail Phoenix