Ten Bookish Resolutions for 2017

1. Continue making a concerted effort to read books by women and POCs. The quality of my reading shot up last year when I started setting myself targets for female- and POC-authored books from the library. I’ve recently moved house so haven’t figured out what exactly the targets will look like this year, though. My reading for 2017 already looks pretty good on the female authors front (eight out of twelve!), and I’ve got a handful of books by POCs on my TBR pile. I expect it’s going to be TBR stuff until I work out where my nearest library is.
2. Continue writing this blog. I mean, that’s probably an obvious one. Blogging is what I do and what keeps me sane. And especially in these dark and difficult times of Brexit and Trump, blogging is what reminds me that I still have a voice and a way to resist.
3. Spend at least an hour a week editing my NaNoWriMo novel. I would love this target to be higher, but I feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day any more. So we’ll see. I’ve definitely been feeling the urge to return to my writing lately, though.
4. Read more fiction online. I read Strange Horizons fiction regularly, of course, but I want to branch out into other fiction venues too; I feel like I’m missing out on a whole field of wonderful writing.
5. Read more SFF criticism. I don’t want just to be shouting my opinions into a vacuum; I want critical context, other voices to speak back to and reflect on.
6. Stop chasing nebulous things like “audience” and “community”. Yeah, this is a difficult one (and I’m aware, here, that this is more “blogging” than “bookish”). I’ve been writing this blog for, what, three and a half years now, I’ve poured hours and hours of my life into it, and still I have approximately three readers (one of whom is a Russian spambot, probably). This is because I am fucking crap at commenting on other people’s blogs, I am terrible at Twitter, I don’t have a tumblr or an Instagram or any of the other things where online community actually lives. I don’t have the time or the energy to do these things because they make me emotionally exhausted and anxious. I can’t be permanently online. So I have to accept that all this work is for me; to help me think through stuff and resist the oncoming tide of capitalism and be me.
7. Comment substantively on at least one online article a week. Having said the above…I do have hour-long lunch breaks at my computer now I work somewhere without a canteen. I can use that time to start participating in venues where I actually want to be: I think it’s going to be a case of pruning back the places I visit to what adds most value to my life. It helps that the Tournament of Books is starting up soon!
8. Leave Booklikes. I’ve actually already done this. My reasons, basically, are that I haven’t found the community there that I hoped I would, and scrolling through all those posts is such a timesuck and I don’t always enjoy it and also it’s so slow.
9. Join a geeky society. I work in London now, there are like a bajillion of these floating around, and I know from experience that there is nothing like shared geekdom to bring people together and make really strong connections.
10. #resist. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep thinking. Keep marching. I may only be a voice in a city of noise, but I’m not going to stop talking any time soon.

(The theme for this post was suggested by the Broke and the Bookish’s weekly meme Top Ten Tuesday.)