Read and Written 2017

If you haven't guessed by being on my blog, I'm a big reader and writer. Both writing and reading books is a major part of my life. Today, I'm talking about how I've done with both of those this year. So, let's jump right into it, shall we?

My Reading

To be honest, I haven't been able to read as much this lately as I could when I was younger. I still read more than an average person (at least I think so), but having more stuff in my life has taken away from reading time. When I was younger, I could read over two hundred books a year. This year my Goodreads goal is 190. So far, I've read 181 books of that goal.

According to my Goodreads stats (I love those), my top three shelves (or genres) are fantasy, children's books, YA books, and other. No surprise there. Least read is non-fiction, which I'll admit I didn't read a lot of this year.

Of those 181 books so far, only a little over thirty have been 4 1/2 to 5 stars and one was 2 stars. The majority have been 3 1/2 to 4 stars. My longest book was Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. Interestingly, all those books added up to 57,832 pages.

I also decided to mix things up a bit and do a reading challenge. I picked the Popsugar one that had some interesting books on it. There were forty regular challenge books and ten advanced challenge books. I still have six books to read to complete it, but two of them I probably won't do. One is a book you bought on a trip (and I rarely buy books) and the other is a book with career advice (maybe I could count a writing book as this one?). It's been fun, but I don't think I'll pick such a long one again. Maybe something short.

For reading next year, I'd like to read more non-fiction (like the book about Hamilton that inspired the musical) and possibly branching out a bit more with my reading. I already read widely, but I want to be more willing to try new things that I'm not sure if I'll like.

My Writing

I didn't have a lot of concrete writing goals this year (something I plan to remedy next year), but I did make one goal of finishing editing two novels. I have mostly completed that goal. I'm almost done editing Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog and The Girl with the Sword, so I feel like I've made a lot of progress. Both of them only need a little more work and then they'll be ready for the next part. *whispers* Beta reading.

I have also written two novels this year, the first two books in my Magic of Wonderland series. I'll probably write the third one soon, and by soon I mean sometime in the next year. But both of those novels add up to equal over 120K words! Not to mention words written for my short story and my editing projects. I may not feel like I've done a lot this year, but it seems I have.

My next projects are editing last year's NaNoWriMo novel and outlining a new story idea. It's a retelling of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow that I'm calling Horsemen and Hollows for now. I also have several other novels that need editing and rewriting, but they can wait their turn. Although I am interested in getting to them. I just have to keep reminding myself that all this will come in time.

Another one of my goals was to start building my author website, but I've decided to put that off for now. I'm not ready to start publishing and although I want to start building a fan base, I just don't think right now is the time. Instead I want to work on getting better at writing and work on a publishing plan. Do I want to consider hybrid publishing? Which novels should I query first? And all that.

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Also, I'll be taking a Christmas break now until December 28. Have a great Christmas, everyone!

Let's talk! How has your reading been this year? What about your writing? Have you ever done a reading challenge? Tell me in the comments.