Things I’ve learned from being a writer and book blogger

I wasn’t feeling very inspired to write today’s blog post. Blame it on the hubby. He’s the one, after all, who insisted on buying the half-liter beers instead of the normal-sized ones because the half-liters are cheaper. Have I mentioned that he’s Dutch? Anyhooo ~ this is where I pat myself on the back for following through with a New Year’s Resolution (Go Me!). I took out one of my trusty journals and flipped through my blog ideas. So, without further ado, I present you my list of things I’ve learned from being a writer and book blogger.

1. It is possible to write an entire book, maybe even a complete series, in your pajamas. Bras are, and will always be, optional. My husband throws a wrench in my plan to live in my pajamas every once in a while by leaving to fly annoying people to far away destinations in the middle of the night and not coming back for a day or two. Turns out that you get stared at even more than normal by Turkish people if you walk your dog in pajamas.
2. It’s possible to spend all day, every day, writing, reading, and talking books. It never gets old – at least not yet. Oh, who am I kidding? It will never get old. Never.
3. There are more books written than I could possibly ever read – even though I read at least one, sometimes two, and on a rare occasion three, books a day. I still find this incredibly difficult to believe. Unfortunately, this isn’t always a good thing. I love, love, love (times a gazillion) the whole idea of self-published books, but like every reader I nearly go ballistic when I read a book full of misspelt/misused words (they’re, their, or there is really not that difficult a concept to comprehend!), grammatical mistakes, and – my personal nemesis – timeline inconsistencies. Ever heard of an editor? The absolute worst part? Some of these books are bestsellers. And yeah, I’ve totally shed a tear or two over that.
4. There are more book genres than I can comprehend. More seem to pop up every day. I’m not ashamed to admit I have to look the definition of some of these genres up. What the heck is magical realism? You shouldn’t judge a book genre by its cover. I can’t believe I’m going to say this but I actually read some sci-fi romance this week. I had no clue this genre existed a year ago. A month ago I wouldn’t even contemplate reading such a ‘weird’ genre. Then, one of my favorite authors wrote one and I was like ‘well, it won’t kill me to try’. Sold!

What have you learned from being a writer or book blogger? I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of possible learning moments. After all, I do spend an unbelievable amount of time with my nose buried in a book pretending the world doesn’t exist.