Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 8

It's the last check in before November madness kicks in. For those of you doing Nanowrimo, best of luck. I will be doing the more civilised Poem A Day hosted by Robert Lee Brewer. If it's anything like last year, I'll be kicking up all sorts of dust along memory lane, writing some doggerel and hopefully some gems. I like to think of it as yoga postures for the muse.

Speaking of which, yoga's back on track, only missed one day I shouldn't have and I'm now keeping my yoga journal in the same notepad as my writers journal. I thought it might be a good way to see how yoga feeds the muse and it's more practical to keep everything in one place rather than trying to remember what journal's for what. I can always type everything up onto the computer if I need to separate them.

Thanks to my task manager refusing to let neglected tasks fall to the bottom of the screen, I finally chose a poem "Living" by Denise Lervetov to read and analyse and have added the notes to my writers journal as well as transferring it onto my learning blog. I love the simplicity and use of colour in the piece.

I finished the rewrite of one of six poems for my current assignment, typed up a commentary of my working outs. I think it went through about 6 drafts before I was fairly happy with it.

Also studying wise, I received my new course materials and fired of my student profile to my new tutor. Hoping to get some time in today to read through the requirements and make notes this time. Honestly, I'm useless when it comes to note making. I'm also feeling weird about embracing short fiction again but it's the nature of the education system to focus on short stories rather than teaching novel's right off. Hopefully I'll get some stories that are slushpileable out of it.

I finished reading and reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy which is scheduled to hit the blog this coming Thursday.

I'm still updating databases, read another writing related article and have been neglecting the novel's spreadsheet. Ahh, there's always something that doesn't get done.

I must admit I'm starting to get used to all this juggling, I'm toying with the idea of writing up a blog post on the benefits of using task managers but have no idea when I'll fit it in at the moment.

Hope you're all having a great weekend.

Book Review - Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson

Book Review - Creative Spirit

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, the characters were well developed with their own motivations and personal conflicts. Plenty of action and plot twists.

Rating: 4/5

• Format: Kindle Edition
• Publisher: Haunted Computer Books (15 Aug 2010)
• Language English
• ASIN: B003ZSHPJS

Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 7

Is it just my imagination or are these check in's coming around quicker every week?

Hmmm, not entirely sure what I've done since last check in. Oh wait, I know.

I got back on track with yoga even though I'm still feeling run down. Although I'd missed it for a week, I was quite pleased that my fitness levels hadn't taken a step backwards and I'd forgot how chilled it was making me feel.

I haven't touched the novels spreadsheet in a while. Thinking of going back to devoting one night a week to the novel.

I've begun the rewrites for my 4th assignment and it's turned out tougher than I expected. Trying to nail poetic form and getting my line breaks in order is proving tricky with that particular poem. After reading C. M. Cipriani's post on comfort zones, I went and signed up for my 2nd module. So I'll be juggling the two for a couple of months but in theory I have time off work in November and again at xmas so I can dig myself out of a hole if I need to. Also, it should shave a bit of time off my overall degree. I'd like to complete it this side of 40. :-P

I've decided to do Novpad again this year. I miss writing new stuff and the prompts last year generally came through during my lunch break. So that shouldn't bog me down too much in my evenings and I can test my study skills when it comes time to rewrite them all.

Reading wise, I'm about a third of the way through Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I got round to reading a writing related article as well over on writer's digest, it was about using freewriting as a way to develop a draft which I can actually see me putting into practice when I'm at that stage with the novel.

Hope everyone's doing well.

Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 6

Ok I think it's time for a goal recap before October runs away with me:


My original goals were set out below:


1) Keep up with my 6x week yoga routine
2) Continue with studies
3) Complete spreadsheet data for novel in progress
4) Keep up with my daily ghost themed blog postings throughout October
5) Get up to date with backlog of poetry rewrites
6) Start submitting poems to the markets by the end of the year
7) Overhaul my website by the end of the year. I might save this for the christmas break seeing as I'll be off work for two weeks.
8) Write at least one new poem a week (may start this once October's out of the way and my blog schedule isn't so intensive)
9) Read and critique at least one poem a week
10) Get back in the reading habit.


Goal 4 got abandoned after my internet shenanigans.
Goal 7 I'm dropping as my xmas break will be after round 4 ends.


As for the others


Haven't done yoga for a week now so definitely starting again today. Been feeling not right since Thursday and had 2 nights where I was waking up every hour. I might just be run down.


Progress over all has been slow since last check in. For studying I still need to crack on with the assignment, I did start going over my feedback from previous assignments and typing up a master document. So hopefully I'll have a bit of a guide to refer to for future rewrites.


So far this round, the spreadsheet has progressed from Chapter 5 to chapter 14. Also noticed a few plot holes and  been making relevant notes in the edits file.


Rewriting poetry is still hit and miss, I unexpectedly did a rewrite yesterday afternoon and have placed it with two others into a folder to be reworked and hopefully subbed out. Ideally, I would like to see what's salvageable from my old work and maybe put a collection together.


I've submitted a few poems this round to one market, hopefully I can get into a regular vibe with this now.


I wrote about 4 new poems so far this round. All shorties.


I'm back to reading, I finished Creative Spirit and have now started The Road. Also read a chunk of a poetry pdf I'd forgotten I'd downloaded. So far this round huge fail on the critiquing at least one poem a week.


Overall, I'm on track with most of my goals but moving slower than I would like.

My Top 5 Favourite Blogs

My top 5 favourite blogs in no particular order are:

Ghost Hunting Theories - Run by Autumn Forest. Always great fun and worth keeping an eye on for paranormal research and theories.

Spooky Reads - Great UK based blog for horror book reviews and occasional author interviews.

Poetic Asides - Run by Robert Lee Brewer. The poet's best friend, covers rules for many poetic forms, weekly prompts and yearly challenges.

Writer Beware Blogs - Anyone who exists to warn writers about publishing scams is ok in my book

A Round of Words in 80 Days - Run by Kait Nolan. Excellent motivational community of writers, keeps me firmly aboard the writing wagon.

So what are some of your favourite blogs?

Other Top 5's
Stephen King Books
Ghost Stories
Poems

Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 5

I've donned my camoflaged suit, grabbed my torch and been delving through the unknown depths of my hard drive and neatening up the folders and sub folders of poetry and ebooks and I have no idea what else. I've deleted around 6000 redundant files and software since Sunday. Added the data for around 9 poems into my story tracker software .

Yoga'd on Sunday, missed it on Monday because I was lost in my hard drive and now I won't be getting back to it til Thursrday.

Studying: Also took a detour on Sunday when I started rounding up all my files to prepare my assessment folder and I have decided which 6 poems to rewrite for my current assignment so I'll be cracking on with that.

Reading: back to reading on my lunch break and am now down to the last 10% of the current book I'm reading, hopefully I'll have the review scheduled to go up on Thursday.

Novel: Timeline data is plugged into the spreadsheet all the way up to chapter 11. Working on this when I've not done much on the important stuff in an evening is really moving this along. I'm passing the halfway point and the spreadsheet will be complete. Then a girls gotta tackle all her location details and characters sheets again, maybe I'll dawdle along on the spreadsheet a bit longer.

I'm starting to feel like Little Miss Productivity

Keep plugging away and if you've fallen off the wagon, climb back on.

Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 4

The temperatures are dropping and my tootsies are feeling the cold. We had a gorgeous sunny day yesterday. Ideal for a day of reading poetry at the Poetry School. It was amazing how poem's were flat on the page but came to life when read aloud. I'm inspired. I'll be nabbing a few of their downloadable courses and considering doing one of their January workshops.

Also as we have a few more poets this round I thought I'd mention the writers digest poem a day challenge starting on the 1st November. I did it last year, it was great fun. I'm tempted to sign up again this year, I'll see how studies go over the next couple of weeks and if I do participate I won't be posting my poems online. Robert's prompt are really accessible.

Yoga's been on hold since last check in, due to over stretching something in my back and other commitents. I'll get back into it today. I think I know where I went wrong. I know too many people with on going back problems to risk these things.

Thursday night, I wrote 3 new poems and about 3 fragments. Friday night I subbed some of the newer ones off.

Made a start on studying i.e read over the requirements for assignment 4 and today I'll be deciding which 6 to rework and make a start today. Hopefully I can be finished in about 2 weeks.

Also been doing what I call admin related tasks and cleaning up my hard drive, printing out drafts and inputting all the data for my poems into my story tracker database. I still have a long way to go to get this up to date.

I think I added the timeline data for 3 chapters of the novel into the spreadsheet.

I've even read a few chapter's of Scott Nicholson's Creative Spirit, have about 30% left to go. If I knew what that was in pages I'd be tempted to try and finish it today.

I'm rolling along slowly but steadily.

Go cheer on the other ROW80er's

ROW80 - Round 4 - Check in 3

After doing well over the weekend, I've hit the mid week slump. I can't quite get back into the reading habit. I've decided that if I'm going to do nothing else in an evening I'll at least fill in part of my novel's timeline into the spreadsheet. I've now added chapter 7, so far the timeline appears pretty stable but I'm inching towards the messy middle part of the story so we'll see.

Yoga's going well, I can actually follow my routine from memory now without having to look at the reference materials between each posture. I'm hoping to gradually start increasing my weekend sessions up to an hour.

On Saturday, I'm not expecting to get much goalage done as I'm attending a one day poetry reading workshop south of the river, should be fun and inspiring and with the invention of google maps I shouldn't actually get lost.

How's everyone else doing?

Blog Updates

After an unreliable internet connection over the weekend I've decided to abandon this week's themed posts on haunted locations around the UK. I completely lost my signal for most of Saturday afternoon which meant I couldn't prepare yesterday's posts and as these were going to require quite a bit of online research there was no guarantee I could do that without losing my connection. I may schedule this feature in for a Christmas special. Apologies to my followers who were looking forward to this feature

I managed to get the writing prompts up for week 1:
Halloween - Writing Prompt 7
Halloween - Writing Prompt 6
Halloween - Writing Prompt 5
Halloween - Writing Prompt 4
Halloween - Writing Prompt 3
Halloween - Writing Prompt 2
Halloween - Writing Prompt 1

Row80 - Round 4 - Check in 2

Autumn has kicked in with a vengeance now taking out both my internet connections. It's been so bad this weekend that I've had to abandon my planned halloween posts. I swear we pay a premium in the UK for a second rate service and it's now starting to affect my work.

Goals are going ok, missed one session of yoga since last checking in.

All exercises for my current module are complete and I'll be working on assignment 4 today and be registering for assessment as well. Managed to get the net back long enough to update my learning log. I might even make the deadline for a change.

Wrote a new poem last night, need to add my commentary to it and rewrite it.

Also managed to get some reading done yesterday. Yay.

Haven't touched my novel's spreadsheet since last check in. And I finally resized my blogs banner to fit the space provided.

How's the weekend treating you?

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 7th

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing prompt week and runs until the 7th October

From tomorrow, I'll be bringing you ghostly locations from around England for a week.

For today's writing prompt write anything at all but it must include a pumpkin, a ghost, and a halloween tradition that is personal to you.

xxxx

Today's ghostly word of the day is G for Ghost. An apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear to the living.

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 6th

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing prompt week and runs until the 7th October

For today's writing prompt think about a dream you had recently or one you can remember. Think about the elements of the dream, what objects, emotions, colours or themes can you explore in a poem? Now write that poem.

xxxx

Today's ghostly word of the day is F for Fortean. Relating to or denoting paranormal phenomena.

ROW80 - Round 4 - Check In 1

The first check in has rolled round, how did you all do?

I've scheduled all bar one of the blog posts needed for my writing prompt week. Then from Friday I'll be scheduling next weeks themed posts on haunted locations around the Uk. For now, I can have a night off blogging.

I'm still sticking to my 20 minutes a day yoga routine. It's certainly helping physically and mentally although I still get a bit wobbly.

Studying will definitly be tackled tonight.

I've filled in a further 2 chapters of timeline data into the novel's spreadsheet. Still 17 chapters to go.

I'm also transferring my to do lists into a new task manager that let's me set frequency and due dates and group by project. So hopefully by Sunday I'll have slots figured out for all the goals that I haven't got round to yet.

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 5th

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing prompt week and runs until the 7th October

For today's writing prompt choose one item from each category below to incorporate into a piece of writing:

A location:
A bus stop A derelict inn
Beside a fire
A hospital
A local park

A Colour:
Blue
Yellow Brown
Ivory
Pink


An Item:
False teeth
A scarf
A leather glove
A cracked mirror
A withered bouquet of flowers

xxxx

Today's ghostly word of the day is E for Ectoplasm. A viscous substance that supposedly exudes from the body of a medium during a trance and forms the material for the manifestation of spirits.

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 4th

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing prompt week and runs until the 7th October

For today's writing prompt you are sitting alone in your favourite spot when something cold touches the back of your neck. What happens next?

xx

Today's ghostly word of the day is D for Disembodied. Separated from or existing without the body.

ROW80 - Round 4 - Goals get set go

Ok, round 4 of row80 has just kicked off. I'm setting my goals here and raising the stakes for myself, I think I'm crazy but a lot of stuff needing to be done spawned by the end of round 3 and there is no point writing if it doesn't get beyond my hard drive and my blog. This round is all about learning to juggle multiple projects and facets of writing.

1) Keep up with my 6x week yoga routine
2) Continue with studies
3) Complete spreadsheet data for novel in progress
4) Keep up with my daily ghost themed blog postings throughout October
5) Get up to date with backlog of poetry rewrites
6) Start submitting poems to the markets by the end of the year
7) Overhaul my website by the end of the year. I might save this for the christmas break seeing as I'll be off work for two weeks.
8) Write at least one new poem a week (may start this once October's out of the way and my blog schedule isn't so intensive)
9) Read and critique at least one poem a week
10) Get back in the reading habit.

Best of luck everyone and I can't wait to see how you're all doing.

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 3rd

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing Prompt Week and runs until the 7th October

For todays writing prompt choose one of the images below to develop into a poem (or more if you wish):
Mist on a window pane
An overturned glass
A chain dangling from a tree branch
A child's doll lying in a road
An abandoned cart

Today's ghostly word is C for cargo cult. (in the Melanesian islands) A system of beliefs based around the expected arrival of benevolent spirits in aircraft or ships bringing cargoes of food and other goods.

Website Updates and blog updates

The following pages of the website have been updated:

Dark Metre Issue 9 has been uploaded to the current issue page.

Writing prompts have been updated.

Blog updates:
Recent posts you may have missed:

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing prompt - Week 1 - 2nd
Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 1st
A quick post on things to come.

A round up of September's posts:
Blogger Zombie Walk 2011 - My contribution to this zombie themed event included my poem Cold Hearted and a dream from my dream journal.
Book Review - Gorelets Unpleasant Poems by Michael A Arnzen
Book Review - One Buck Horror Vol 1
Book Review - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Book Review - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Book Review - The Ritual by Adam Nevill

Enjoy the halloween season

Halloween - Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week 1 - 2nd

Throughout October I'll be posting a ghost-themed post every day

Week 1 is Writing prompt week and runs until the 7th October

Use the following scenario below to inspire a ghostly themed poem or story:

A ghost is chasing you along an unlit lane. Why? For example did you steal something of theirs? Are they an old rival back from the dead? What other connections can the ghost have to you?

xxxx

Today's ghostly word is B for Banshee. A female spirit whose wailing warns of a death in a house.

October is Ghost Month - Writing Prompt Week - 1st

Throughout October I'll be bringing you a ghostly themed blog post every day of October to celebrate Halloween.

Why ghosts? my long fiction leans more towards the supernatural, I love ghosts and ghost stories. Out of all the horror tropes they are my number one. There's something more plausible about a ghost than a monster with sharp teeth for example. There's something creepy about being touched by a being that you can't touch back and what could be worse than going through life to become a ghost wandering aimlessly, trapped in neither one place nor another.

Week 1 - From the 1st October to the 7th October. I'll be setting Ghost themed writing prompts every day. All posts will also include a ghostly word of the day.

For today's prompt choose one item from each category below to incorporate into a ghost themed poem or story or any other form of writing you feel comfortable with:

A location:
Beach
House
Forest
Roadside
Attic

A Colour:
Red
Black
Green
Purple
White

An Item:
A locket
A body part
Photo
A wallet
A broken vase

Ok, get writing and have fun.

Ghostly word of the day. A is for atmosphere. A pervading tone or mood.

A quick post on things to come

I had great fun on the blogger zombie walk 2011, I still have some blogs to get round but I always find it amazing how different imaginations can interpret a common theme. Thanks to those of you who dropped by, commented and followed. You can view my zombie-themed post here

Throughout October I'm planning a ghostly blog post for every day of the halloween season. This has been a bit of a last minute decision so it will be interesting to see how well I do.

Week 1 will be dedicated to to ghostly writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing. The first of these will be up later today.

Week 2 will be dedicated to ghostly sightings and locations around England

Weeks 3 and 4 are still to be decided on perhaps a poetry week and a fiction themed week or  something akin to myths and legends.

Also if you are a writer and looking for a supportive community to keep you on track with your writing endeavours please consider A Round of Words in 80 Days run by Kait Nolan. Round 4 begins on Monday 3rd October. I'll also be participating again this round.

A new issue of Dark Metre goes out tomorrow. Read the current issue here before it disappears.

Enjoy the weekend.