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Saturday, February 1st, 2020
Looking Back on January
Saturday, February 1st, 2020 11:13 amJanuary was a good month. I just wish I'd finished the latest chapter of Throat of the World, but at least I made a lot of progress. Here's how the month went:
Writing: I wrote every day in January, which helped make up for an unproductive December. Usually I stayed at it for at least an hour. Chapter 15 of TOTW is finally inching close to done.
Drawing: I've been drawing every day. Sometimes I only scribble a bunch of circles and lines, but it reinforces the habit and counts as practice (drawing perfectly straight lines and perfectly circular circles is harder than it looks). More often than not I end up drawing something I see, like a lava lamp or a coffee mug. The results aren't good yet, but it's encouraging to see gradual improvement.
Reading: I read 20+ pages every day and finished an old favorite, Tai-Pan by James Clavell. I love the way Clavell writes dialogue and inserts unexpected humor, and he's good at juggling a large cast of fun characters that feel distinct from each other. Even when Clavell's characters do horrible things, they're compelling and I enjoy seeing what they do next.
I also read High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz, finishing off The Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy. The Deryni series didn't do much for me. Characters were forgettable, conflicts and relationships had little depth, and lots of things happened that didn't make much sense. But this was Kurtz's first work, and her writing greatly improves in The Legends of Camber of Culdi. The Camber trilogy had story problems, but it also had memorable characters stirring up trouble in a world that felt real. It also had elements that reminded me of Game of Thrones and left me wondering if George R. R. Martin took inspiration from Kurtz.
Writing: I wrote every day in January, which helped make up for an unproductive December. Usually I stayed at it for at least an hour. Chapter 15 of TOTW is finally inching close to done.
Drawing: I've been drawing every day. Sometimes I only scribble a bunch of circles and lines, but it reinforces the habit and counts as practice (drawing perfectly straight lines and perfectly circular circles is harder than it looks). More often than not I end up drawing something I see, like a lava lamp or a coffee mug. The results aren't good yet, but it's encouraging to see gradual improvement.
Reading: I read 20+ pages every day and finished an old favorite, Tai-Pan by James Clavell. I love the way Clavell writes dialogue and inserts unexpected humor, and he's good at juggling a large cast of fun characters that feel distinct from each other. Even when Clavell's characters do horrible things, they're compelling and I enjoy seeing what they do next.
I also read High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz, finishing off The Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy. The Deryni series didn't do much for me. Characters were forgettable, conflicts and relationships had little depth, and lots of things happened that didn't make much sense. But this was Kurtz's first work, and her writing greatly improves in The Legends of Camber of Culdi. The Camber trilogy had story problems, but it also had memorable characters stirring up trouble in a world that felt real. It also had elements that reminded me of Game of Thrones and left me wondering if George R. R. Martin took inspiration from Kurtz.