Month In Review: August 2016

August was August. The Dog Days of Summer. The countdown to the return to school. The end of summer school and more often than not a mad scramble to finish whatever it is that I was trying to accomplish. But this summer was different. It's been a weird summer, as I've documented in these Month In Review posts. So what about August?

WRITING: Another miserable month. I scrapped another project, the prank war novel. I couldn't get the voice or story down. It wasn't working for me. As my friend Mike Winchell says a writer has to write, but I've been stagnant this summer. I can't get a groove on any of these projects. I've got some ideas of how to shake this, but we'll see if I can pull it off. I've been doing a lot of "studying" lately and reading some good writing books that I hope will help me moving forward. I know how to write, that's pretty obvious but I need to figure out some things about what's wrong with what I'm writing that it's not catching on. I'll get there, I know I will. I agree with Mike that a writer has to write, but sometimes you need to clean the machine and I'm doing that now. I started a "Abandoned Project" blog that I may or may not get around to because I have some ideas that can work, including one that I could never do but I really love enough that I may do it anyway, just to practice and another that I may be able to modify to work for me. I also came up with another big book fantasy idea that I'm not rushing into yet because I have some actual research and prep to do before writing it.

For now though, I'm studying. I'll find the words at some point.

READING: I had a heck of a reading month. I finished 11 books and I'm working on a few more. The interesting thing is between the end of July and most of August, I read 7 books in a row that all are pretty much going to make my best of the year list. So, here's the highlights:

• The Forgetting Moon: Long formed this on the blog. Heavy metal epic fantasy. Great book, loved it.
• Paper Girls, Volume One: A brilliant graphic novel about a group of paper girls that get caught up in some strange events involved in some crazy supernatural adventures the day after Halloween. 
• Hamilton: The Revolution: I love stories of stories and this is THE story right now in pop culture. I loved reading the inspiration behind the music and the story. The Chernow book that inspired the musical is high on the reading queue as part of my "research" and it was brilliant. 
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: It was nice to be in Potterland again and it was a highly entertaining story that I breezed through. The one thing that it was missing though was JK Rowling's voice. It just lacked her...heart? But still a cracking good HP story.
• The Serpent King: I single served this book, reading it in one day and it was brilliant. I long formed it on Goodreads and may longform it here on the blog.
• Save the Cat: A writing book that was recommended to me by someone. It was interesting and eye opening to an extent that it has me rethinking some of my writing enough that I want to revisit it. 

Read a couple of graphic novels, some good, some not so good, but enjoyable. I'm presently engaged (once again) with some Dragonlance and then going to move into some more epic fantasies for my "study."

I'm on pace, as of today, to read 78 books this year. I haven't read as much epic fantasy as I initially planned, but I'm making progress. I'm singled out some books to read in the coming weeks and we'll see how it plays out. 

WATCHING: A lot of watching too.

• THE OLYMPICS: I watched a ton of this, even while I was at work. I love the Olympics despite the usual political turmoil that surrounds them. If you follow me on Twitter, you know how much I love the Olympics. 
• THE HUGO AWARDS: I live streamed them and tweeted as I watched. I'm not going to get into great detail about my feelings about the Hugos, but if you've gotten to know me via social networks, I think you can figure it out. 
• JAMES BOND: It's been a Jame Bond summer for me and I'll be long forming my Bond thoughts at some point in the next few weeks. 
• ANT-MAN: I need to redo my Marvel Cinematic Universe ranking sheet. This is a fun movie. 
• 30 for 30: Pony Excess: Another of the 30 for 30s that I love. It's just so good and there's something that's so satisfying knowing that smug prick Craig James eventually falls flat on his face. 

DID: Lifting. Planned the first two months of school

So, with the sun setting on Summer 2016, I have nothing to show for it. But here's to the beginning of the school year and the hope that I find a groove.