This past month saw me buy painting and gaming tables for the basement office/den. I got the painting table set up last week. I started in priming an entire 15mm SYW Reichsarmee infantry brigade and command. I got through the first series of base colors before stopping for the week. That's my own painting.
In painting for others, I'm trying to finish up an 18mm Fantasy Orc Football team pictured here:
My goal is to get them done by Feb. 15, 2016. I've had these figures since my father's death last summer. I wasn't able to get around to them until now. Fortunately, the person I'm painting for understands.
A normal painting routine is Monday evening: paint for others; Thursdays and Sundays: paint for myself. That's how things have worked out over the past two years.
But my literary pursuits got reorganized this past fall. I went to reading six days a week Monday and Tuesday was for work related manuscripts; Thursday was for non-fiction; Friday and Saturday was for speculative fiction; and Sunday was for Analog Magazine.
I normally try and read 100 pages worth of work related writing a week; 100 pages of speculative fiction; 30 pages of non-fiction; and 30 pages of Analog Magazine. When my father was dying, I barely kept up with my work related reading and critiques. I let Analog Magazine pile up and then let my subscription lapse.
The original idea behind reading Analog Magazine was because I wrote short stories, I should support a magazine that publishes them. Sadly, there are few magazines that publish speculative fiction. I've tried marketing some short pieces. I've met with little luck. My pleasure reading also took a hit when my father died. I have backlog of 30 fantasy and science-fiction novels to read. That works out to about 15,000 pages. I read about 100 pages of speculative fiction per week.
That's a 150 weeks worth of reading! Enough for three years. I also have 2.5 years worth of non-fiction to read. Much of it is on the Vietnam War. That was one of my recent book purchases. I also have books on ancient Rome, the Korean War, the bush wars in Rhodesia, the War of Spanish Succession, and the battle of the River Plate in WWII. Both hardcopy and Ebook form. So I'm reading four different things at once.
Steven King suggested a writer spend four hours a day reading and four hours a day writing. That leaves little time for television or movies. I'm probably the only person in America not to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What time I spend on television is sports related. I'm spending about four days a week editing/revising. This go on for months. I have three different manuscripts I'm working: a novel and two novellas. All I seem to write now are novellas. I have the rough draft of a fourth manuscript ready to go. That won't be started until the end of the year. It's steampunk related.
I'm trying to focus my speculative fiction reading on authors I should know when I finally start a literary agent query. I've organized literary agents by the authors they represent and who's open to new queries. That list has helped mold some of my pleasure reading.
I'll have more on my forthcoming painting projects later...
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