Ten resolutions for 2013

Ten resolutions I’ve made for this year…

1. To finish and post some of the blog entries I began over the Christmas holiday. (If you’re reading this, this one’s already going well.)

2. To blog more often – Wednesday used to be my day for odd blogs on here, and I’d like to bring that back. I was trying to focus more of my writing time into the magazine, but it didn’t really work out – I ended up with thousands of words of unfocused snippets!

3. To finish all of the reviews left over from last year, for example: BPRD – Being Human; Nowhere Hall; Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God; Cloud Permutations; The Strange Talent of Luther Strode. At least one of those was left over from 2011!

4. To read more books sent in for review. I haven’t had a proper look at my 2012 Goodreads spreadsheet yet (expect a really tedious blog post about it at some point), but I think last year I only read about 20 or so books for review, out of about 162 read in total.

5. To uncouple my reading and reviewing. Last year I thought it would be a good idea to not read anything new for review till I’d written the review of the last one, to avoid piling stuff onto my to-do list. Problem was, I never did completely clear that reviews to-do, and so I spent most of the year reading non-review books and then reviewing them instead! So this year I plan to keep on reading regardless and treat the reviews as a separate job.

6. To start work on reviews sooner. I read a lot on the iPad and I’ve begun to keep Pages open in the background, switching over there to write a paragraph when I think of something to say. I’ve got 800 words or so written about A Town Called Pandemonium without yet sitting down to write a review.

7. To box up some books. Our home reached its maximum literary capacity a good few years ago, and yet they keep coming! And I hardly ever read print books now. I want to put some of those that have been sitting on my shelves for years unread into boxes, let them regain some allure, and let the books that have been patiently hanging around in piles get some shelf time.

8. To read at least one more of my Folio books. It’s painful to have spent that much money on books I’ve barely touched! Their wonderful four-volume Great Stories of Crime and Detection spent most of the last year as my monitor stand.

9. A work one: to invoice people more promptly. There are lots of other work things I need to improve on, but no point in telling you my weaknesses!

10. I usually resolve to be nicer, but I’ve just checked with Mrs Theaker and she says I failed at this last year (for the umpteenth year running), so instead I’ll resolve to read and reply to TQF submissions more quickly. We don’t get many, so there’s no reason not to reply within a few days, but it’s a job I always procrastinate on.

(One last minute addition: to use the Ctrl and Shift keys on the right-hand side of my keyboard more often.)