Talk the Time Table

Posted from my other blog dedicated to writing "Through a Forest of Ideas"
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The twenty first century won’t be the twenty first century unless you have too much on your plate, figure out insane ways to juggle with your priorities and interests, grind something hard inside the small snippets of time you have free and doing this without having to knock a few more hours sleep from your schedule.

I imagine the average closed minded person without a great myriad of interests [for whatever a reason], whose life fits exactly into reality, have a hard time do what life has written on that person’s chore list. So what’s left for the rest of us, who can’t survive the 9 to 5 hell [though in my country it usually extends to 10-12 work hours a day] and need to have hobbies to feel at least partially sane? I am one of the latter sort with zest to undertake new things, but a big fat lazy ass to actually exert control over the situation. Here is what I need to juggle with:

~ Academic life [lectures, studying, exercises, homework, exams]
~ Writing [novels, short stories]
~ Reading [for pleasure, for review, for research on projects]
~ Blogging [reviews, interviews, guest posts, for TLR and my writing blog]
~ Socializing [mail, twitter, blog hopping via Google Reader, actual people (yes, I occasionally do interact with actual human beings in the flesh)]

Due to financial circumstances that have affected the whole family, I shall have to become BREAD EARNER the 2nd and become once more employed, which let me tell you is not as easy in this economic situation, in my country, where part time jobs do not exist and for a student still in university. In time it will happen, which means that I will eventually find myself in a mutated time crunch. I do not foresee a happy ending here and the only resort to my aid will be time management skills. If life was a D&D session I would die to throw a twenty in that category, but since it’s not I will have to talk the time table. My schedule book is actually a folder and still a WIP, but looks promising.

I start from the big picture and move down to the day-by-day chaos. The first six sheets show the outlined goals in each category mentioned above with quota breakdown distributed in an even as possible manner. Writing and Reading are more or less on a calendar month basis, while the rest are on week dynamics. With these initial six sheets I will know what kind of productivity I aim to achieve. Pictures below.

Reading:

Writing:

Reviewing:

Blogging about Writing:

Next follow the sheets that will house my notes on different topics connected to the six sheets, but have no immediate effect on my time table. Usually tasks I need to do in regards to project I am currently working on or notes on the book I am about to review. It saves me time, when I forget a detail I want to mention in reviews and is more helpful, while reading anthologies.


The last and largest sheet group contains the daily agenda for each day, where I will need to fit all the quotas in such a manner so that I can achieve the weekly and monthly goals. Since I am not that far in to be honest I didn’t get to doing these yet and I am not sure how effective this system will be, but it will certainly help me with my memory issues.

PS: Excuse my crappy photography skills.

Ranking: In or Out

After my latest “Reviewer Time” installment, which I thought to be pretty ditzy and energetic, I saw quite a reaction from several well known bloggers, including James from “Speculative Horizons”, Larry from “OF Blog of the Fallen”, Joe Sherry from “Adventures in Reading” and the list goes on. Although it’s like a minor shit storm or better yet one of those minor uproars in the vein of “Oh, really?” I felt like it makes a great discussion’s topic: ranking and all that jazz.

This all had to do with my interviewee, Paul Stotts’ statement about numeral ranking, its importance and what the lack of which speaks about reviewers. I didn’t feel slighted by Paul’s use of cowardice in regards to reviewers, who didn’t use ranking systems, because I’m quite uncertain on a steady formula for my reviews per se and both feature numeral ranking and omit it. Around 90% of my reviews are without ranking, because in the beginning, when I did employ ranking I felt very uncomfortable with it and that got me in one sticky situation that convinced me not bother. However as of recently I have encountered books that leave me in a baffled and usually torn state, where I can’t decide at all whether I enjoy a novel or not and this hesitation is reflected. In this case I use ranking as a tool to cement, where I lean to: like it or dislike it. All this to avoid the reader drowning in a sea of vague as one commenter has mentioned over at Paul’s “Blood of the Muse”.

This is my personal relationship with ranking, which is an elusive thing. I get the idea of why ranking exists and whom it serves. When one’s time is diminished to quick skimming through the Internet, it’s natural that a criteria for screening through products need to arise, so that the customer gets exactly what he wants: the 5 shiny stars given by third parties. When I am not in the position to read longer reviews on books I’d sure like to know through the rating system if the reviewer enjoyed the book. However applying a rating system myself is tricky, since my tastes and I have not yet set a judging criteria that can be held as consistent for all reviews. I happen to use ranking as of recently to clarify vague points, but are not the highlight or more essential part. Personally I like to end my reviews with a verbal ranking I refer to as The Verdict, which acts as a summarization that omits the need for a ranking system. This doesn’t mean however that I am against ranking. When I trust the reviewer delivering the posts I can easily judge whether a book is for me or not.

A well penned review will get the point across. This is what I know from countless non-ranked examples on other blogs as well as mine. A review that nears 1’000 words is fully capable of revealing the reviewer’s opinion. This however doesn’t mean that a review can’t feature a ranking feature, if that is the person’s preference.

My position on this isn’t exactly the firmest. As usual I run from one camp to the other, because I have this pesky habit of putting myself in both side’s shoes and weighing both arguments as somewhat valid for me. It’s a reviewer’s prerogative to choose whether or not to assign a numeral score at the end of a review or not. As seen from the many bloggers in the SF&F field practices vary, but I am curious to what readers prefer and other reviewers that haven’t responded with a post think as well.

With Ranking or off with its head?