Are You Ghoul, Revenant, or Zombie (Part II)

Welcome to part two of my rinky-dink series on what I've learned from brief research about ghouls, revenants and zombies. You can click here for the section on ghouls.

The Revenant

Having a revenant sounds cool, but Wikipedia defines it as a ghost or an animated corpse similar to a vampire* so not sold.

In some folklore, it's a person who returns to harass neighbors and family*. Nothing special, like another ghost there.

I do like the other definition it offers: a dead hero brought back by a wizard to go on some quest no one else would brave, under the wizard's control. It also referenced Jason (Friday the 13^th) as a revenant, and the protagonist of The Crow. Side fact: I have never actually seen that movie.

My experience with revenants has been through the Final Fantasy series, a stronger version of a zombie (causing life-drain when it attacked. Like a vampire, if I recall). They're mentioned as spreading disease among the living, which I could make use of.

I'm undecided on revenants.

*Taken from www.wikipedia.org

New Project

I woke this morning with uncharacteristic energy and motivation to get things done, my main goal shall be to handle this clutter. A lot of it is the same information, or useless.

A part of me is considering washing down those doors. I have a few other things to do so that probably should wait.

It's too easy to build clutter and not notice as it saps your mood and motivation in miniscule increments. I'm a tidy and organized person (okay, okay, I'm obsessive) but it catches me all the time.

-Some unasked for advice: set at least a day aside every week to really look at your workspace and consider tidying up. Or washing surfaces down. A fresh smelling, allergen-free workspace is wonderful, but simply returning books to their shelves can be just as revitalizing. Setting a schedule keeps you from forgetting, so you deal with it before clutter takes effect.

I should probably go handle my clutter now.

August in Review

August is concluded. Pretty sure I completed most of my goals, or enough of them to be satisfied with myself considering three weeks of crushing frustration about writing and plotting.

I have discovered the timer is my friend. With the help of the yTimer program*, I've managed to get more done this month than in past attempts, and I'm only doing 30 minute intervals.

The reasons (in a bullet list!):

• Forces me to focus on one thing at a time, and not worry/consider/daydream about anything else because I have a limited amount of time to work before the obnoxious buzzing occurs.
• Allows me to focus on task at hand because I know that I only have to toil at it for 30 minutes before I can fly from my chair and forget about it for a while instead of staring at a page blankly until I nod off.
• I don't stare at a blank page until I doze off. Somehow, actually having a timer cut back on the frequency of dozing off at my desk, and proceeding irritation of trying to translate what I wrote down right before sleep struck. It wasn't cool in high school, and it isn't cool now.
• Hand-in-hand with the previous, the 30 minute timer buzzes before boredom swoops in and I start playing with fonts in the editor or embellishing letters and doodling in page margins.
• The short breaks between force me to get up and handle other tasks, like preparing for the next day of work, getting more water, or just stretching (which helps with that whole falling asleep issue – who knew?)

Don't ask me why I didn't take to this strategy sooner when I've read and printed so many articles about it already.

I still have the impression of time missing in my week. I've been using methods to track my hours, but still haven't found all those missing minutes. Maybe they never leave bed when I get up in the morning.

Writing

1.      Made it to the end of the first scene of the new short I'm working on. Haven't devoted much time to it.

• Sketched a brief outline for the short.

1.      Still struggling with outline for LBW, but stumbled across a blog, Do-It-Yourself MFA(DIYMFA), with helpful articles, and through playing around with a mind mapping app to make character sketches I surprised myself by finding more ideas for back story, and a few for the plot.

• I also played around with free form character interviews of two characters, and dug up some more back story.

Revision

1.      The short in revision is, well, still in revision. It's one of three stories I've ever done that began right in the middle of the action, and not before. It feels cheesy for that reason, but maybe it really isn't.

2.      ST is so close to being done its 2^nd revision. Goodness, it's been a chore. Call me Madame Treeslayer.

I'm working to take the advice of numerous writers and break writing tasks down to the smallest goals possible. I do it all the time with my daily chores, but never tried with writing. I'm thinking it might help.

Hmm...I should probably decide what my goals for September will be too.

*yTimer by Spacejock software. Free to download and use. I am a fan of his yWriter program, which is how I found the timer.

End of the Month Update

Goodbye July, and hello August. Yet another month has come and gone already.

I tried hard, but my birthday was not to be resisted. It bowled me over, leaving an achy 27 year old me in its wake. I would have let this atrocity go without complaint, except the cheesecake I brought for my birthday was beyond mediocre, and there are some things I just can't let go.

Turns out I did not accomplish my writing goals for the month, because of personal oversight, as is usually the case.

My Latest News And A Double-Whammy

Mother Nature definitely got the best of me today. Not only was it disgustingly hot and humid, but pollen was rampant. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't sneezed out chunks of brain or melted into gooey writer-remains. I did not escape drowsiness and the infernal itching caused by pollen. Both make it difficult to get any writing done.

After a three day break from writing (for day long errands away from home) it's back to the plotting and catching up. I'm still working on the unnamed short story I had originally planned to finish by the end of March. I'm only a few pages from completion, at least, while revision of Little Bit Hexed is moving along and giving less hassle than I assumed it would. At the other end of that spectrum is my fantasy novel, where I can't seem to shape rough draft ideas into well rounded forms due to a missing thought in the middle.

Little Bit Witch is crawling forward. Ideas I previously gripped firmly in my mind wriggled free while I was distracted and I still haven't found most of them. Sneaky little jerks.
Tomorrow starts a new day of tasks needing to be done, starting with work on Little Bit Witch.

Here's to productivity.

And no more itchiness.

At Last

Hello again, how have you been? So much has changed since my wholly unintended disappearance, I have a lot of catching up to do, learning Blogger's new features included.


Considering all the sites I use to keep up with, and the habits I'd settled into prior is fairly shocking; I had never noticed everything I was doing while I was doing it all, but I also had daily Internet access and oodles (great word, by the way) of time. That, however, has been altered indefinitely.