Happy New Year
Happy New Year!
Since my last update in November, a lot has happened in both my personal and professional life. I’ll keep this brief!
Over the past year, my focus shifted from blogging here on my website to focusing on consistent weekly newsletters at Substack and as the year went on writing more blog posts there. Lately Ive been adapting some older posts from here on website to repost on Substack. Going forward, this website will continue to be the proving ground for work I may publish to a wider audience on Substack in the future but I will be blogging primarily on Substack.
Throughout 2023 I read - a lot. Everything including books, news articles, magazines and essays. Towards the end of 2022 I signed up for several magazine subscriptions and have since discontinued all of them - I can’t keep up! I’ve got stacks of magazines I haven’t gotten around to reading. Most of this reading has made its way into my newsletter, which highlights my wandering focus at any given time!
Last year I read 17 books. I haven’t worked on a yearly roundup post yet. Perhaps soon. Since late November I’ve been working through Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin biography while also re-reading Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. I’m taking a while to go through these. Why? I haven’t stuck to any regimented reading schedule over the past month. And that’s ok. But while I entered the new year with both of these books opened on my shelf, I’ve had to reconsider why I’m reading them and for what purpose.
I started reading Benjamin Franklin simply because I was interested. I found it somewhere, picked it up, and it sat on my shelf for a while before I was ready to give it a go. Isaacson’s biography is easy to read but it’s long and extremely thorough - he leaves no stone unturned. Two points have captured my attention so far. First, Franklin was in many ways the prototypical ‘American’ or at the very least helped developed our ‘American-ness’ or what it means to be an American. Second - Franklin was a printer and writer first and throughout his life used both for his own benefit and the the benefit of the country. I’m fascinated by the accounts of Franklin’s imaginative use of articles, essays, and letters and later his own autobiography. Isaacson’s book, filled with useful quotes and history, is the sort of book I want to review after reading and with index cards in hand, copy down some of the gems I want to hold onto (a la Ryan Holiday’s notecard system). I’m dedicating this month to reading this book. I’ll use the notes I’ve made while reading for a future blog post.
I’ve read Da Vinci Code once or twice before. Once you’ve read a thriller, there’s really no point in rereading it - the suprise is ruined. But I wanted something light and fun to read to balance out the dense historical biography so I figured I’d give this one a shot. When I first read Brown’s thriller in high school it changed my life. As a young man in a Catholic School this book changed my understanding of the church and I began to ask questions and pay attention to theology and philosophy. I loved the way Brown made art and history fun and exciting. This book has been on my nightstand for the past few months and I’ve been reading before bed. I got some substantial reading done over the holiday break. What started as a fun re-read has now turned into a project - I’m reading to better understand the way Brown writes and the thriller genre in general.
I want to finish these as soon as possible and move on but I’m only now gaining some momentum. Over the holiday break I didn’t hold myself to any sort of schedule and just read and wrote as little or as much as I wanted.
Over the holiday I started writing a detective short story, just to work on something fun. I’ve challenged myself to keep writing and finish the story before I get bogged down by doing research or reading detective novels. Instead, Ill keep reading Da Vinci Code. I’ve also started taking notes on thriller writer David Baldacci’s masterclass. This is all the ‘research’ I’m going to do at this point or until I finish the story anyway!
I want to focus more on monthly goals this year: a book a month or a bigger blog post per month with several smaller weekly posts and as always my weekly Five Bullet Friday newsletter. I need to plot these goals in my writing planner and stick to them. If I want to continue doing something every day, week or month, I will aim to make it a habit by just doing the work, otherwise I’ll never find the time.
Some goals for this year:
Actually finish a fictional project - and publishing if it feels right!.
Practice writing short stories writing - which may help me finish longer stories.
Read more books - Ive got a stack of books waiting to be read.
Publish blog posts to Substack as outlined above - on NYC history, books, movies, music, and anything else which interests me.
So - I’ve got a lot of work to do! It’s already the second week of the month and I don’t really have a plan together yet. Whenever I start something new, the other things I was working on can sometimes fall by the wayside. I aim to prioritize projects better and dedicate the time I’ll need to complete these projects. I think I’m off to a positive start so far. Here’s to a whole new year of reading and writing!
