Update Thursday #68

Welcome to Update Thursday, my own personal meme of sorts where I post an update of the goings on at my blog, with reading, with writing, and beyond. Feel free to borrow the idea from me for your own bookish musings.

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On the Blog this week:

• The indie author panel tackles Book Trailers in the seventh installment of my blog post series, The Journey of Self Publishing.
• My review of The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee.
• See the pictures from my Zoo Trip last month!
• Don't forget to fill out my blog survey. I want to know what you think of my blog and what kind of things you like and don't like on blogs. ^_^

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Reading...

Books I finished this week:

*looks around* ~none~ *oops*

Books I'm reading now (and some still):

~Meant To Be by Lauren Morrill~

 ~For Darkness Shows The Stars by Diana Peterfreund~

~The Princess Bride by William Goldman~

~Charmed Thirds by Megan McCafferty~

577 of 1026 E.E. Cummings poems finished (30 this week)

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Writing...

~ If Only We ~ 30,010 ~

~ Before We Knew ~ 11, 449 ~

~ Whatever This Is ~ outlining ~
~ Under Enchanted Skies ~ 1,550/plotting ~
~ Beyond The Horizon ~ plotting ~
~ So I Thought ~ plotting ~
~ Hold Your Breath ~ plotting ~

Well! Didn't do a thing. I wanted to, but I had more pressing things to do. (See below in Otherwise) One thing that DID just happen is I won a five page critique from an author. Score! So I'll be getting some feedback on my writing. Maybe that will boost my enthusiasm a bit.

I was just reading this article on YA Highway and it seems to sum up how I feel at this point of my novel. Mostly the 'somewhere in the middle things get difficult' part. I am enjoying writing, but it's gotten harder with the little things I need to include to get the story to progress. Hence the index cards and calendar from last week. I've got scene ideas to include as filler (not like wasteful scenes that do nothing for the story, but those tiny scenes that fill in the blanks so that you don't have your story skip a whole week to get to the next important scene), but using them to fill in almost seems... like a speed bump? All I really have to do is rewrite it out better, maybe even cut part of it down. But, it's frustrating nonetheless.

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Otherwise...

It's been a busy week since my last update, mostly trying to get caught up on everything. My long "To Do" list is still long. And my room is still a mess. And I have online sales and listings to take care of. I'm hoping to get half of the stuff on that list crossed off by tomorrow night. INCLUDING finishing a book AND something to do with my writing, probably writing on the index cards. So... I'm gonna sign off and take care of this list!

Until next time!

~Jessica