Update Thursday #67

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 Extras To Include in the sixth installment of my blog post series, The Journey of Self Publishing.
• My review of Keary Taylor's What I Didn't Say.
• The lovely Keary Taylor stops by to talk about her book.
• See what I stacked on my shelves in June.
• What do you think of books that retell the classics? I want your thoughts!
• 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:

~The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee~

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~

547 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 ~

I did reach my goal of 30,000 words so YAY! But, I was hoping to break more than that. Why didn't I? Well, I needed to remap out my story. Remember my idea with the index cards? It was time to sit down and get that going. So I did. Check it out:

Three giant blank calendars

Pretty colored index cards to fit the spaces

I didn't get to work on mapping anything out, but this alone is progress. I'm also working on coming up with more background details on all of my characters. I want to flesh out the reasons why my characters act like they do, the things they love... Right now, I feel like I can't write much unless I have more of this worked out. I sometimes forget certain details and that's no good.

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Otherwise...

My mom got a TV stand... so that means I can have my entertainment center back. And that means, my room can be complete. FINALLY. It's been almost two years since we moved in here, it's about time. So I've been going through my room and moving furniture. By next week it shall all be done.

To get myself motivated, I started listening to music on Pandora. I created a playlist by entering Wham! (how I adore George Michael's voice), which ends up playing all kinds of great 80's tunes. It played "Shattered Dreams" by Johnny Hates Jazz at one point, triggering me to pull it up on YouTube and put it on repeat. Oh, so good. It's times like these that I wonder if I was supposed to grow up in the 80's instead of the 90's. Then I hear my favorite 90's music and realize I wouldn't be me without that either.

I'll be working on my blog plans for August and September soon. I want to stay ahead and keep the content going on here. Especially once my blog post series ends. I've got a few things in the works. As much as I want to have lots going on here, I want to keep up with writing my book. I'm not as ahead of the game as I'd like. Oh, the balancing acts we face. *sigh*

Until next time!

~Jessica

PS: Scheduling this so I can sleep in, and take care of things outside the blog.