2017 Goals Mid-Year Check In

Happy halfway through 2017, y'all! 
Tonight over on my channel I posted a little update video on my 2017 goals. I think I'm doing pretty well on all of my goals so far throughout the year and I hope to keep my momentum going through to December 31st. Fingers crossed! Click the video to see how I'm doing in my goals and keep reading for some links to other posts explaining my goals! :)

2017 Goals blog post #Project 5 rules & details

SSSBC June Vlog + Story Excerpt #1!

BLAHHHHHH WE'RE A MONTH INTO SSSBC AND THIS IS SO MUCH HARDER THAN I ANTICIPATED!!! I totally underestimated what it would be like jumping back into creative writing and while I'm having a great time and really enjoying my story and the way it is developing, it is soooo much harder to fall into this form of creativity and navigate my way around it. Over this past month I've learned two major things:

1. I really love writing dialogue.

2. I suck at prioritizing writing and making time for my story!

These two things are the theme throughout my June SSSBC vlog (especially the second one) and I am struggling for some advice on techniques to make things like writing a priority. If you have any advice you can share with me, please let me know either in the comments of this blog or in the comments of my writing vlog. Any and all advice is appreciated!

Anywho, here are two of the more exciting parts of this blog post: my writing vlog and my story excerpt. Yes, you read that right. I'm only providing you an excerpt of my story and not the whole thing. Why you ask? Well, as mentioned above, I've found returning to creative writing extremely challenging and I haven't been making time to write, so my money is on that this story isn't going to have a first draft until the end of the summer. I've decided to focus on writing this story throughout the entire summer and shoot to have a first draft (fingers crossed) by the time August is over. Will it happen? WHO KNOWS?! That's for future Riley to figure out.

Keep going for my June writing vlog and an excerpt from my story that I'm particularly fond of! :D

July 2017 TBR!

Happy July everyone! We are officially halfway through the year! July is one of my favorite months of the year. I LOVE summer and July is the absolute peak of summer where I live. I'm looking forward to this month of reading a lot. I have three buddy reads I'm tackling, and the BooktubeAThon is at the end of the month! July is sure to be a great reading month and I'm feeling good about all of my picks. Keep reading and watch the video below to see what I will be reading for over the next few weeks! :D

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon*
We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson†

Reading Challenge Picks

A book that features and LGBTQ+ character: I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson^

2017 Goal Picks

Diverse: Flawed by Cecelia Ahern
Classic: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Non-Fiction: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
TBR Jar: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

*Buddy read with Anita
†Buddy read with Michael
^Buddy read with Shannon