In 2007, I undertook a little competition put on by my library called the 50 Book Challenge. The challenge is a simple one: read 50 books in a year. Audiobooks, podiobooks, and good old paper books all count. The only restriction is, if you have to ask yourself if it counts as a book, it probably isn’t one (like I wouldn’t count a single comic book but a longer graphic novel might totally count).

When I first decided to do this two years ago, I actually scoffed at my librarian and joked I probably read 50 books in a month. In turn, a lot of people that I talked to about this told me it was stupid for them as they always read more than 50 books in a year. To everyone who thinks that, let me just take this moment to tell you that 50 books is way more than you think it is. I speak as someone who reads both very fast and just about constantly and I was hard pressed to hit my 50 books within the mark. So don’t be so fast to assume you are already meeting it.

The main reason I didn’t do the challenge last year was because one of the “rules” set by my library for doing this is that you have to write a review of each of the books you read. I don’t always have much to say about a book and I really hated having to write even a few sentence reviews so that really deterred me last year and even the year I did do the challenge because I would stall listing the books I had read because I wasn’t in the mood to review it. But, this year, I have decided to just go ahead and do the challenge and just not write reviews of more than one word unless I feel really strongly about something. I reject your rules, library, and substitute my own.

Why do I want to take the challenge again this year?

• To read more. Pretty simple, that.
• To read different things. For some weird reason, when I feel like I am reading books for a reason like this challenge, I tend to read those kinds of books that I always put off that are either out of my comfort zone or that I suspect are just good for me. If makes me read a wider variety of things than I normally would for some odd reason.
• To keep track and count of what I read. By the end of the year, I have forgotten both what I read and when I read it. I liked having a record of everything I read over the last 12 months.

I only decided to do this a few days ago but, luckily, the extra long holiday vacation allowed me to front load this year with a lot of books so I am a little ahead of the game.

So far in 2009, I have read (in fancy widget form):

If you hover your mouse over the widget, you can read my comments (in pale blue) if I wrote any. I like this little widget because I can update it as I go so there is always a list of everything that I have read in this challenge so far.

I also cannot promise that I will be listing these books in order as I go. I have a habit of totally forgetting books and then adding them later out of order so, you know, sorry about that.

Anyway, I encourage you to take this challenge on, even if only to show me how many over 50 books you read in a year. I for one hope to be over 50 books when all is done but we’ll see. October through the end of the year tend to be brutal so I make no promises. But I am already 11 books in so its looking good at the moment.

If you are doing the challenge and posting your books on your blog or other website, throw the link in the comments so I can watch your progress and get some ideas for stuff to read.

There was an article that I read somewhere that I didn’t care enough to take note of where it was that said that the English language would reach 1 million words in 2009. Oh, fine, you guilt-ed me into looking it up. Here is the article.

Because there is something wrong with me, I read that and my first thought was, “I should make that my new writing goal.” Yes, Hillary. You failed to even complete 50,000 words this year during NaNoWriMo (yeah, notice how I’ve been real quiet about that? It’s a sore issue, we’ll get to it later.) For those of you playing along at home, 1 million words in a year means writing about 2,740 words a day, 19,230 words a week or 83,333 words a month. Yeah, that is like 20 NaNoWriMos in less than 20 months. In short, that is insane.

I wrestled with the idea for a few days and then finally decided that, even if I were to count all my blog posts, this was still insane and I should drop this idea. This was a rare moment of sanity from me and I think shows growth.

Of course, however, some of my writing buddies that I follow online had the same idea and are actually doing it. We aren’t even done with January and quite a few of them are finished with 100,000 words or more. I would love to say that they make me sick but, frankly, I am jealous. Every book about writing that I have ever read makes it clear that the most important thing is discipline and making time to write every single day. Dude, I don’t have time to sleep every single day so I am definitely not writing every day. The only reason The Whine Seller is a mostly daily blog is because I write a week’s worth of posts in advance and just schedule them to post one a day. But I really should be writing every day and that is the problem.

It all comes down to discipline though, in my case, a little time management wouldn’t hurt. I am becoming convinced that I should be able to work less than I do if I just order my work better. I’m not saying I am ever going to have gobs of free time but I think I could have less, OMG OMG days.

I was thinking of setting myself a 250,000 words in 2009 which is a far more conservation estimate but then I decided instead to just make a list of projects and go with that instead of word count. Ready for the list?

My writing goals for 2009 are:

• Finish that damn novel I have been working on forever. You know the one.
• re-write and start to send out to agents/publishers a children’s story I wrote 3 years ago and only just found in a pile of junk on my desk while cleaning
• Type up and polish the play I wrote, by hand, in a crazed fit in the middle of the night like a nutcase
• Re-do The Love of Three Oranges into the long awaiting school age version (that people have been begging me for for years)
• The podcast of The Author (about 1/3 done and sounding really awesome!)
• Do the newest edition of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant and podcast of that
• Complete both Script Frenzy 2009 (for which I have a really awesome idea for a play that I haven’t told anyone about besides Jill who told me it sounded cool though, to be fair, she is one of my best friends so what else was she going to say?) and NaNoWriMo 2009

Yes, this is a tall order. But I also think its a do-able order. I just need to kick my butt into gear.

What do you think? Impossible or possible?

I am feeling rather under the weather today. It’s been around for about two weeks now and only just recently evolved from a “what is wrong with me with the headache and the random tiredness” to a “yeah, I think I’m sick.” I should be curled up under the covers reading comic books because one would assume I deserve a sick day but I am incapable of doing nothing so, instead, I am going to stockpile a bunch of blog posts that I had been meaning to write and schedule them to post spread out amongst the next few days.

Why am I telling you this and giving away my secrets? Well because if I mention something like being sick after you know I am better or later am saying I am too busy to blog while blog posts are appearing on this site, I just wanted you to understand that they were all pre-written today so you don’t think that I am out of my mind.

So, yeah, I’m going to brew myself another cup of tea and hope those flavornoids do their thing and make me better and write a bunch of blog posts. Enjoy!