Here's to a prosperous and productive 2023. Cheers. There, I've said it and so it will happen, right?
For me, the period from the end of October through to about now in January tends to diminish into a downward eddy of mayhem and thus counter-productivity, so I'm eager to reach the turning point so I can start scrambling back upwards.
Resolutions? I heard @Biancamarais on theshit podcast say that she and her husband call them revolutions, which sounds about right. My own ikigai pause includes a bullet point list, hastily concocted on the Notes app on my phone. It's a list of how my daily habits and routines are going to fit together so I can achieve all that I set out to do each day. No more procrastination in January 2023! Are you with me?
I do have a number of authors I am keen to read in the new year: Lily King, Claire Fuller, Paul Harding, Mai Nguyen, Elizabeth Berg, Marilynne Robinson, Gabrielle Zevin, Ann Napolitano, and of course I'll continue with some of my favourites including Elizabeth Strout, Ian McEwan, Emma Donoghue, Elena Ferrante, Dani Shapiro, Karen Joy Fowler and oh, the list is so long!
How are you coordinating your reads for this year? Do you use Goodreads? Are you taking inspiration from me and curating your own TBR Bookpile each month/couple of months. Perhaps you have a number of newly received gifts, which I think is a great place to start. Please do follow along and see if any I am reading or have read are of interest to you @francisgilbert_bookclub or send me an email to join my 2023 monthly Checkpoint Bookclub (It's a project in progress, so stay with me and I'll keep you informed).
My Instagram account, which I set up as a business account in October has now reached a 401 following of which I am very proud. Since I'm still gauging the market and working out in what followers are interested and from what they might benefit, I feel my reach of audience is a good one. I am happy to say I have friends and family, small craft businesses, libraries small and large, second-hand bookstores, book coaches, editors and proofreaders, fellow book reviewers, teachers, parents, authors and writers and more. It's exciting.
Finally, it's worth mentioning how my writing is coming along. Having completed almost a full first draft of my novel WIP during the November NanoWriMo, I have taken a month's break and hope to return to finish that draft by the end of February. In the meantime, over the holiday period, whilst the children have been at home and we've had visitors, I've been focusing on short stories. I managed to plan, draft, edit and submit a submission to The Writers Playground Challenge @writers_pg. This is a paid entry and a competition and I LOVE it! This is my second round and the way it works is that on a particular planned date, they offer some prompts for character, setting, central object and set their entrants off on a 10-day challenge to create a short story based on the chosen prompts. It's been a great experience for me both times. I'm now awaiting feedback and results which come out in February. I've also written and submitted a few more stories and am enthusiastic to see how this process of writing stories helps me in my bigger drafting.
Non-fiction is still pulling at me, meaning I am tentatively writing out an outline for a non-fiction text, which I hope to share or may consider querying. More to follow with this project. Are you like me and find the more projects you have, the more productive you tend to be? Actually, let me take that back! I need to rethink that one?
If you're a parent and your children are back in school-mode, have you enjoyed working on their Reading Journey skills? Have they read more or less since school has re-started?
Thank you for your interest and contact. I look forward to being more consistent with my blog entries in 2023! Now that I'm a little more settled in my new location (Katy, TX) having moved from Dubai, U.A.E. last year, my roots are helping me to stabilise a little more.
Much love from,
Chrissy Francis-Gilbert
@francisgilbert_bookclub
francisgilbertbookclub@gmail.com
