I’d love to know why March felt like the longest and shortest month. Oddly, this month was busy, yet I spent a lot of the time resting and re-calibrating as I worked on The Reanimator’s Soul. It was sort of a weird month. Not good or bad, just a transitional month between projects and parts of the semester. Anywho, let’s see what my goals were and what I got up to during the month.
- Read 8 books
- Write The Reanimator’s Soul
- Minimum goal 15k words
- Real goal 20k words
- Stretch goal 25k words
- Enjoy spring break and actually relax (as opposed to using it to catch up)
- Blog weekly
- Send out my monthly newsletter
- Do some digital art
- Plan my goals for Q2
Books
My goal this month was to read 8 books, and I read 10.
- The River of Silver (#4) by S. A. Chakraborty- 4 stars, a great book of additional stories in a universe I was very sad to leave. Also, yay for some closure.
- The Two Towers (#2) by J. R. R. Tolkien- 4 stars, once again loving Andy Serkis being a one-man cast.
- Tithe (#1) by Holly Black- 3 stars, it was okay. I know this is one of her earlier books, and it definitely reads like my middle/high school experience. It was weird reading a book that takes place so close to where I live.
- Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert- 4 stars, loved this one. The neurodivergent and mentally ill rep was great, as always with Hibbert’s books.
- The Ancient Magus’s Bride (#17) by Kore Yamazaki- 4 stars, we’re still mid-arc, but I am enjoying it and hoping the conclusion of this arc will be satisfying.
- The Magus of the Library (#6) by Mitsu Izumi- 4 stars, I love seeing a mystery deepen and characters come into their own. This is a complex yet low stress manga.
- A Black Women’s History of the United States (#5) by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross- 5 stars, a great primer for further research.
- Circe by Madeline Miller- 4 stars, if Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings was your jam but you wished there as extra baggage, this one is for you.
- She Loves to Cook & She Loves to Eat (#2) by Sakaomi Yuzaki- 5 stars, so sweet, so tender, so sapphic, and so much good food.
- Valiant (#2) by Holly Black- 4 stars, I’m not sure how this one ended up with more stars than book 1. The end sort of saved it for me because I really like Ravus and the whole Beauty and the Beast dynamic we had going.
Admin/Behind-the-Scenes Stuff
- Finished the major compiling for the university literary magazine my class was working on (low key stressful since this was the first one since 2018)
- Sent the university literary magazine to the printers
- Wrote the preliminary blurb for The Reanimator’s Soul
- Setup the preorder for The Reanimator’s Soul at all major retailers (except Google Play, which I will do soon)
- Started doing crafts again, yay! I started working on a Halloween village plastic canvas kit from Herrschner’s, which I’m really enjoying doing since I haven’t done plastic canvas since high school. It’s very centering.
- Made my quarter 2 goals and setup my Kanban board
- Enjoyed spring break with only a bit of freaking out (my brain has been on fire all month)
- Retail therapy for a case of the stressful sads, which means buying washi tape and planner stickers
Blogs Posted
- February 2023 Wrap-Up Post
- My Blind Dog
- On False Starts
- The Reanimator’s Soul is Available for Preorder
- And I sent out my March newsletter
Writing
If you saw my false starts blog post, you’ll know that I ended up basically rewriting the whole beginning of The Reanimator’s Soul. I’m not going to lie, I was very annoyed at first. I felt like I fell behind as soon as the month started, but ultimately, my writing word count goals take a backseat to story quality and starting over was necessary. I have to keep reminding myself of this when I internally freak out over being behind. Behind is better than words that are lukewarm and don’t make sense in the larger context of the work. It took me about a week to figure out what I needed to fix and how to make it better. In the end, I wrote 12,000 words this month, which I’m pretty happy with since all of these words make sense and have sent the story in the proper direction. I’m feeling much more confident at this point, so fingers crossed no major rewrites will be needed at the 25-33% mark.
Hopes for April
- Writing (we’re feeling ambitious this month)
- 23,000 words is the goal (770 words a day)
- Because of this goal, everything else is sort of scant, which I’m fine with since this is also a heavy grading month
- Read 8 books
- Refill the well each week (aka do art, crafting, or game)
- Blog weekly
- Send a newsletter each month
- Doctor’s appointment/taxes BOO
- Start watching Sarra Cannon’s Publish and Thrive updated lessons
Kara Jorgensen 
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