Who's Counting, Anyway?

In the past several months I've discovered the inestimable value of counting. After the birth of the twins, I was afraid that my writing would suffer a severe setback. To forestall this, I set myself a weekly goal of 2500 words. I also created a way to track how well I was meeting that goal, designing a daily spreadsheet to log my progress. So far, all this counting has been a smashing success. For each of the last three weeks I have been able to meet or exceed my goal, and if I can keep it up, I should be finished with the rough draft of Road from the West sometime in April.

Since keeping count has helped so much with my writing, I've decided to try something similar with my reading. For 2011 I've joined two historical fiction reading challenges. The first one is hosted by Historical Tapestry. The rules of the game are these:

• Read any kind of historical fiction book during 2011 (HF Fantasy, HF Young Adult, etc.)
• Post a review about it on your blog.
• Add the link to your review on the Historical Tapestry website.

The categories for entry are:

1. Severe Bookaholism: 20 books
2. Undoubtedly Obsessed: 15 books
3. Struggling the Addiction: 10 books
4. Daring & Curious: 5 books
5. Out of My Comfort Zone: 2 books

I'm shooting for number one, Severe Bookaholism. I'll be posting my reviews on Read Room, my book review website.

In addition to this challenge, I've also joined another one hosted by Holly at Bippity Boppity Book. It's called the Chivalrous Deeds: Historical Fiction Challenge, and is similar to the Historical Tapestry challenge, but with a little bit of a twist.

The object of the challenge is to "visit as many courts as possible," which basically means that your historical fiction choices have to have royalty in them. As with most challenges, you must post a review to your blog and post a link back on Bippity Boppity Book. There are two prizes for this challenge, to the person who reads the most books and to the person who visits the most different courts.

I've decided from experience that the most successful resolutions are those that can be tracked and quantified. Last year my resolve was to read the Bible in a year, and it was only by adhering to a strict schedule (and meeting with my Bible Study prayer and accountability group) that I was able to succeed.

Read more and write more--those are two of my New Year's resolutions for 2011.

Who's counting, anyway? I am.