For a short month, I packed a lot of reading and writing activities into February. Herewith is my monthly log of what I accomplished (or didn’t, as the case may be):

Writing and Writing-Related efforts

• Outlined/plotted first 17 chapters of my thriller novel/WIP
• Submitted an idea for Twitter Fiction Festival and advanced to second round of judging. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut to be one of their featured authors, but I hope to present my fiction idea just the same beginning March 12. Follow me now @grfrazier23 for details on how to get in on the action.
• Participated in Writer’s Digest webinar on plotting your novel scene by scene with writer/instructor Jordan Rosenfeld
• Participated in Writer’s Digest webinar on writing the thriller with James Scott Bell
• Began a thirty-day trial of writing program Scrivener to help organize my novel. I’m really liking the functionality of the program, which I’m still learning, and plan to purchase the program at the end of the free trial period.
• Attended my second Nashville SciFi/Fantasy Writers Group meeting where I read and critiqued fellow writers’ works and received feedback on a short I am writing.

What I Read

• 84 scripts for Nashville Film Festival screenwriting competition (bringing total to 145). I also attended the NaFF Wine & Scripts script reading event with fellow script readers.
• Dallas Buyers Club movie script
• The Joker SC (collecting issues 1-9 of the 1970s DC Comics series)
• “Fetching Raymond” by John Grisham (from Ford County: Stories)
• “Torch Song” by John Cheever; “Prey” by Richard Matheson; and “The Father-Thing” by Philip K. Dick (all in Urban Horrors)
• Continued reading The O’Briens by William A. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone
• Started reading Split Second by David Baldacci
• Numerous magazine articles from Discover, Time, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Wired. What can I say, I read magazines. A lot.
• Countless articles on the craft of writing and screenwriting online, including many from WordPress blogs.

Other notes of interest:

• Appointed to La Vergne Library Board
• Movies seen on the big screen: The Lego Movie, Three Days to Kill
• Movies on DVD: We Bought A Zoo; The Place Between the Pines; We’re The Millers; House at the End of the Street
• On TV: The Olympics; The Black List; The Following; Intelligence; Mike and Molly; The Big Bang Theory; The Walking Dead; Justified; Hawaii Five-O; Ripper Street; and various episodes of Combat! and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Twitter update: 235 followers; 39 tweets in February
• WordPress update: 101 followers; six posts in February

– G. Robert Frazier