2019: What to expect of me?

2019: What to expect of me?

Happy New Year everyone!

New year, New day and hopefully a new beginning. I know time is just a man made construct and the ‘new year’ doesn’t change anything. But for me, and many of others, this is big deal. And if you are anything like me, you probably have great plans and schedules that are ready and have just begun to be put to use. 

I don’t call them resolutions, because we all know how quick I am at failing them. But they are typically long to do lists and new ideas to be tried out. So what is on store for this year? Let me show you my GRAND plans for the new year. 

Reading Plans

Here is a list of reading challenges that I will be participating this year.

Goodreads Reading Challenge 2019

I think this is the most basic of all the reading challenges. I am increasing my target from 35 to 45. I know it might seem very less compared to other prolific readers/ bloggers around here. But I hate having to stress about reaching the target and not enjoying the book. 

Target: 45 

A – Z reading challenge 2019

Hosted by the Ginger Mom and company, I did great last year and that motivated me to join this year’s challenge as well. But this year I will plan to participate more and be more social.

Target: Reading books with the titles starting with all the letters of the alphabets

Reading more classics

One of the major goals I have is to read more classics during the year. And I will following these two challenges for my reading choices. 

Reading more Indies

I love reading indies and promoting indie authors. I am making it a point to read more indie books anyway, so why not make a big deal of it and join a challenge for that, hosted by As told by Tina.

Psst,if you are an indie author, consider writing a guest post for Elgee Writes.

Nancy Drew Challenge

It has been years since I read a Nancy Drew and I found a stash of those books a while ago. So I am going to take a go at it. I will be following this Goodreads group as a guide.

Blogging Plans and actions

We come to the interesting part of the post – the blog plan.

I participated in the Tidyathon hosted by Clo and Sam of Book Dragon247 and Fictionally Sam and I totally loved it. And all the colorfulness you see on my blog are just a result of that. It is still a work in progress, let us just face it, editing about 200+ posts and graphics is not a small deal. At least that is what I tell myself.

For 2019, I decided I will blog better, like every other blogger here. But knowing me I won’t do well without an action plan. So here are my plans.

Blog content

When I started Elgee Writes I used to post lots of book reviews and a little bit of personal updates. I have come a long way from that and currently I post four times a month with a variety of content like quotesquizzes and tags and lot of discussion posts with a weekly review. 

And joining Nicole’s Book Blog Discussion Challenge last year made the switch more easier. So I will be joining the challenge for 2019 as well. As I was saying earlier, I will be more vocal and participative in this link up as well.

I am also planning to include more fun and non bookish posts in the coming months but not to worry, it will stay a book blog.

Action

Blog Engagement:

We all know how important blog engagement is to a blog’s success. Don’t we all hate shouting into the void and no one hearing it? 

One of the measure I am taking to increase my blog’s engagement is participating in the Comment 4 Comment Challenge 2019 #C4CC2019!
You can read all about it here and it is not too late to sign up.

Join us to leave no comment un-replied and un-returned!

Increase your blog's engagement by participating in the Comment 4 Comment Challenge 2019 #C4CC2019! Join us to leave no comment un-replied and un-returned and it is not too late to sign up. Click To Tweet

I am proud of myself with my last year’s blog hopping and I plan it to keep up.

Action: 

  • Visit blogs I follow at least weekly once. 
  • Reply to all the comments on my blog
  • Return the comments by visiting their blogs
  • Learn to follow and use blog statistics. 
  • And to care about the follower counts.

Blogging Schedule

This is a more obvious one – more consistent blogging.

I already post 4 times a week and I more or less am consistent in doing that. I plan to continue that but I am trying to make it more streamlined. I am putting to use of all the time I have spent on ‘pretending to be organized’ into becoming actually organized. 

So what I am going to do differently?

Action: 

  • Planning the topics ahead of time.
  • Working in batches
  • Scheduling posts at least two days before the publishing date
  • Taking planned holidays off the blog

Make more blogging friends

Yes you heard it right!

Blogging has got me so many new virtual friends this year, especially ones with similar interests. Isn’t that really great? 

I am part of a few Discord, Facebook and Twitter groups. But being the introverted booknerds that we are, it is understandable that I didn’t take part in the conversations as much as I wanted. So this year I will be doing exactly that. 

I am looking forward to following lots of new bloggers this year. So if there are any blogs that I should be following, let me know! I will give them a follow right away

If there are any blogs that I should be following, let me know! I will give them a follow right away. Click To Tweet

Action:

  • Post more original tweets on Twitter
  • Plan and schedule posts on Instagram
  • Talk to people online

Personal goals

I don’t usually talk about my personal life and goals online but I am making an exception. I will explain why in a bit. 

  • Take more photos of the places I visit. (Bonus if I post on Instagram)
  • Learn to knit
  • Take initiative to talk to more people
  • Create and follow routines in general life (See I am being more organized!)
  • Self care and self love, for obvious reasons and I am not breaking that down

I guess that is it for now! I am not going to be trying too hard or be stressing myself with these plans, but using these action plans as guidelines and take it as they come.

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2019 plans

Let us talk

What are your goals for the year? Do you have New Year resolutions? Share your favorite blog that I should be following already. Let us talk.

2019: What to expect of me?

Sunday Musings #31: An Update On My 2018 Challenges!

Hello people
Did you guys have a merry Christmas and happy holidays? I will be visiting each one of you to check upon your celebrations soon.

Weekly Update

As I was telling you guys earlier, last week we had a staycation planned at Fujairah. I am showing a map so that you will know where I had been. 

Update on challenges

I loved the stay and gave me time to chill on the beach. I tried reading a lot but somehow I kept getting interrupted.

Update on challenges

Oh well, I had fun anyway. Hit the follow button on Instagram to make sure you are getting updates from United Arab Emirates!

Update on challenges
Update on challenges
Update on challenges

Even after I came back from the vacation I couldn’t shake the feeling off (does this happen to anyone else?) and I ended up not posting much this week. 

Don’t you need my update about my 2018?

I enjoyed reading a lot of y’all’s yearly round up posts and loved a lot. I even found a few new bloggers in the process. So I thought I will couple this post with my 2018 challenge updates. Cuz why not, RIGHT?

2018 – an update

Take a look at the resolutions that I attempted for the year 2018 here.

Goodreads Reading Challenge: 35 

Status: Done

Yes I know it is too low for a book blogger but you know what? I loved reading each one of them and for once, I wasn’t running like a headless chicken to reach the target. 

I might be having a similar target for this year as well. 

A-Z Reading Challenge

Status: Done

I know I have been talking a lot about finishing the A-Z Reading Challenge 2018 but I am so excited about this one so bear with me. I didn’t even expect me to finish this. YET I persisted.

Yes I will be joining in this one again. 

Bibliobibuli Book Group challenge

Status: Done, I guess

While I read all the books that we chose, the group challenge kinda fizzled out. While the group is still alive and happening, we dropped the idea of group reads. Sigh. 

Hey, I found this amazing book through the group read challenge –  Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

I am looking for a monthly group read / discussion to join, so if you know one let me know. 

2018 Book Blog Discussion Challenge

Status: Done 

You all know how much I adore Nicole and her monthly discussion challenge pushed me to write more and have more open discussions. Though I have not been regular in adding my posts to her link up, I am planning to change that in 2019.

I will be participating in this again and I plan to participate more in the discussion. 

365 commenting challenge

Status: Epic failure

I loved this idea of meeting new bloggers all through the year and I was so pumped to start on this one. But I failed to complete it. I am so disappointed in myself.

That is why I started this Comment 4 Comment Challenge. It is not too late to sign up.

It is not too late to sign up for the Comment 4 Comment Challenge!

Click to Tweet

I did read better and deeper and blog more consistently. So I guess 2018 was not all bad on the blog front then.

I will be linking today’s post with Caffeinated reviewer’s Sunday post Meme.

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Update on challenges

Let us talk

Did you finish all your challenges of 2018? What are the challenges that you will be participating in 2019? Let us talk. 

2019: What to expect of me?

Join the Comment 4 Comment Challenge 2019!

Being a successful blogger may mean different things to different people. But we all have to agree that getting a comment or a share on our blog definitely makes us a happy blogger. Even after a year of blogging on Elgee Writes I still love waking up to new comments on my posts.

Stop shouting into the void!

Blog engagement is crucial to making us motivated to keep blogging. It is that kind of validation we all love from our peers. Otherwise I might be just shouting at the void, right? 

Well, we all need a community.

Last year I joined the 365 days commenting hosted by Read Write Love 28 and failed at it miserably. Obviously it was too much for me and I dropped out fairly early of the game. Apparently I need some encouragement and a lot of support to get to doing what I am supposed to do anyway. 

Bloggers comment junction

So I asked for help from my dear bloggers in forming a community to continue visiting and commenting in each other’s blog. I was not surprised at the turnout because who would not want to make a new blogger friend right? You can still sign up for the bloggers comment junction here.

Comment 4 Comment Challenge

In the spirit of new year, why don’t give it a new start? 

Welcome to the new and upgraded Comment 4 comment blog challenge 2019.

Yes you heard it right!

What is the Comment 4 Comment Challenge (C4CC)?

Blogging is a social activity. Blog engagement requires both giving and receiving. If that sounds interesting to you, this challenge is for you. 

The challenge is to ‘leave no comment un-replied and un-returned’.

The challenge is two pronged:

Replying to a comment you received on your blog
And then
Visiting their blog to leave a comment

If you feel you are up for this challenge, SIGN UP right away. 

What is the goal anyway?

If you have any of the following as goal for your blog this year

  • Be more social 
  • Make more blogging friends
  • Improve blogging engagement
  • Increase the number of comments on your blog, organically
  • Increase your blog followers
  • Follow more blogs 

Then this Comment 4 Comment Challenge (C4CC) for you!

How can you participate in this challenge?

  • Sign up for the challenge here 
  • Grab my button and add on your blog
  • Follow my blog and leave a comment on my blog
  • Reply to every comment you receive on your blog
  • Share the news on social media
  • Bring in your buddy and as they say, the more the merrier. 

Grab me!

Comment 4 Comment
Grab this button from the sidebar

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Comment 4 Comment

Let us chat!

What are your blogging goals for the year? What is the main obstacle in reaching them? Have you found a solution yet? Let us talk.

 Sign up here

2019: What to expect of me?

A Stephen King’S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels

Dani from Perspective of a Writer gave us a prompt to discuss my Favorite Stephen King Character for the week. As most of you all might guessed that it is for the love of the King of horror that I jumped on to post for this meme. Let us get on to this shall we?

While it may not be the most popular of Stephen King’s novels, Rose Madder will always hold a special place in my mind. My relationship with Stephen King has not always been smooth and it was Rose Madder that made all the difference. So it might not come as a surprise that I would choose someone from it as a character I love…. to hate. 

Yes you heard it right.

I choose a character that I completely hate yet I can’t ever push to some dark corner of my mind and forget about or move on from. Intrigued? Let us talk about Norman Daniels.

elgeewrites A Stephen King'S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels ND4

Who is Norman Daniels?

Norman Daniels is the antagonist of Rose Madder. Norman Daniels was a police officer in Aubreyville and married to Rose McClendon. The story majorly deals with how Rose escapes the clutches of the masochist and malevolent Norman, making Norman play a predominant role.

What makes Norman Daniels such a remarkable fictitious character?

He is an abusive husband

Norman is sexually, physically and emotionally abusive towards his wife Rosie. He beats Rosie for reading a trashy book (brace yourself, Misery’s journey) so much that causes her miscarriage. Being a cop and having cop friends makes it easier for him to get away with it. 

elgeewrites A Stephen King'S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels ND2


Rose doesn’t even dare to get away from him because she knows he will find her, for about nine more years. And even when she finally runs away, he finds her as she suspected. 

He is racist, homophobic and also sexist

Norman Daniels is a crude redneck that hates more than half the population, quite literally. He hates everyone almost equally, be it women, gays, African Americans and the Jews. He bites homosexual men to death. He doesn’t think twice about killing a witness. 

He is the sickest of fictional human monsters – ever

Norman Daniels makes the other Norman, from the Psycho and the Bates Motel look nice.

elgeewrites A Stephen King'S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels ND0


His favorite method of punishing men is to pop their testicles and/or bite them. He has already raped and murdered a witness and continues to punch, kick, bite and murder women and men alike as he stalks his runaway wife without remorse. 

I can bet that one cannot read the opening scene of Rose Madder, that entails the scene of his beating, her miscarriage and him getting away with it, without wincing. I had to put my book down more than once to get over it.

He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He is one of the truest monsters not just of Stephen King’s creation but also in any book I have ever read /heard of.

He literally turns into an animal

As if this is not evil enough, he turns into a minotaur by the end of the book.

elgeewrites A Stephen King'S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels ND


His rage and his obsession literally and figuratively changed him into a raging bull whn he finds out Rose ‘s location and that she is dating another man. He also realizes that she is supported by her lesbian friends at the women’s shelter. He murders them and rushes to Rose’s apartment where he almost kills Bill, Rose’s date.

If Norman Daniels was the worst ever, why and how did he become my favorite character?

Norman Daniels controlled the entire story

As one would expect of a Stephen King’s book, Rose Madder has its supernatural elements. While things are not picture perfect (pun intended) and the supernatural part was okayish at the best, at least for me, it was Norman that made the entire book strong.

elgeewrites A Stephen King'S Character I Love (To Hate): Norman Daniels ND3


Even when the macho Norman turns to a panic stricken human afraid for his life, I could not ignore him. The book would have worked so much better as a thriller/suspense about an abused woman and her crazy husband.

How many characters, in the entire Stephen King world of books, have had the power to make the book work even without the supernatural elements? None other than Norman Daniels, IMO.

And that to me, that is the mark of a character etched to perfection.

Who is your favorite character from Stephen King’s world? Do you have any antagonists that you cannot move on from? Have you read Rose Madder? Let us chat.

Norman Daniels

2019: What to expect of me?

2018: Challenges and plans for the year

I know, yet another new year is here!! If you know anything about me, you should have guessed this. Christmas and New Year’s Eve are my favorite celebrations ever, only topped by my own birthday. Even though technically I don’t celebrate either of them, I get excited unwarrantably. So the 2018 New Year’s Eve is not gonna be any different. Yes, I might be sitting in front of the TV or laptop (usually both) with a bowl of ice cream, but I still will be very excited nevertheless.

Well, that sounded dull and awkward.

But dear readers, wait for it. I promise you that 2018 might turn out to be the best year yet for my blog and you (because you will be reading my blog, duh). I have a plan. Yeah for the first in my blogging life I have a plan and am not gonna wing it just like that. I am definitely growing up, right? But I am not gonna reveal them right away and jinx them. You will have to wait for them.

2018 year

You know there are several crazy book bloggers out there right? Yeah the crazy kind, not me pfft! They just are not content with churning out amazing contents for their blog week after week, but also are signing up themselves for weird challenges and make themselves suffer more. I don’t understand why anyone would do this to oneself especially when their reading lists already are too long. Seriously, some people do not have self control at all.

2018 year

Speaking of self-control, I have signed up for more than a few challenges for 2018. wails I know… I know… I have no self-control and my TBR is already too long and I don’t have to time to search for books that would fit their criteria but I have signed up. Somebody should definitely stop me.

2018 year
If you are still here listening to the drama, sniffles here are the challenges I signed up for the year 2018. And I will be updating my progress once in a while, which actually translates to ‘whenever I have nothing else to blog about’.

 

2018 Goodreads Reading Challenge

This is a fairly usual challenge that most book lovers know and are already taking part. I will be setting the bar fairly low so that I won’t stress myself out in case I don’t catch up. My last year target was 35 and I reached that goal even with the longest reading slump I ever had.

So I am gonna have it set at 35 again.

A-Z reading challenge

2018 yearI met Megan in one of the book blogger groups and I knew I had to jump in right away when I saw that she was hosting the A-Z reading challenge 2018 on her blog. The goal is to read a book for each letter of the English alphabet. We have a freebie blank letter that we can swap for a letter.

You can read more about the challenge at Gingermom and Company. She promises mini-challenges, giveaways and prizes too, guys.

Bibliobibuli Book Group challenge

I will also be reading two books per month chosen by the group members. So that counts for a total of 24 books and the only promise they ask for is reviewing every book that the group read.

I am such a mood reader and I don’t generally follow any prompts or schedule when I start reading, so following these challenges might be a tad difficult for me. But I must strive on, right?

Also as I mentioned earlier I am hoping to become a bit more serious (gasp) about blogging I took up two of the year long blogging challenges. There are going to be several shorter challenges as well, more about that later.

2018 Book Blog Discussion Challenge Sign-Up

2018 yearI have been a follower of Nicole’s blog for a while now and I have taken part in her discussions post once in a while. To make it more regular, I signed up to write up to write up at least one discussion post related to books, blogging or personal every month.

Read more about the challenge here.

2018 year365 commenting challenge

As a step towards extending support to all bloggers and making new blogger friends, Nori started this challenge for 2018. I signed up to comment on 365 different blogs all through the year. Of course, I won’t be commenting a blog every day but will catch up a few once a week or so.

You can read more about the challenge here.

2018 yearI will be on the hunt to find new blogs as well, so if you are new here, leave me a comment I will visit your blog as well.

Aside, if you are interested in making new blogger friends, check my post about the Bloggers’ Comment Junction.

So tell me what are your plans for the new year – reading, blogging or even personal. Do you have any challenges set for yourself this year? Are you signing up for any of these challenges above? Let me know in the comments.