To Edit Mounds of Boxes

Well, I missed my Sunday blog posting time. I've had a death in the family last week and am working to get back into my normal routine (grandparent-in-law). To make a long story short I ended up working on something around the house which needed attention, thanks to one of my friends volunteering to help.

Unpacking boxes, yes boxes. My husband and I moved over the summer, and our back bedroom ended up being storage area central as we brought our belongings into the house. As I'd been going through some of the boxes they ended up in various stacks as well as being spread around the room. While the cats enjoyed climbing over and around them, the space wasn't fit for us to use. It was quite overwhelming glancing in that room, but my friend and I made short work of the mess. We went through various boxes, sorting things and condensing other things down into shared boxes. There is still plenty more for me to go through, but now most of the floor is visible and the remaining boxes are neatly stacked against two of the walls.

As I prepare for revising a first draft novel of mine I keep getting the feeling of looking at a messy room of boxes. Boxes with who knows what sitting in them, waiting to surprise me. And yes, possibly some good surprises in there as well. There is some of that nervous trepidation of looking at the room as there is to thinking ahead to my rough draft.

Update in Progress

Yes, I decided it was time to work on the layout of my blog to do something different than the default layouts. I started with the Minima template and edited the code from there, starting with adding a background. Said background is from an image I made awhile ago, which matches my website header image. I'm using the same color scheme as well to tie things together nicely.

I still have to play with the colors a bit more along with the header for the blog, but so far I like how this is turning out.

Goals for April

What is that saying, "April showers bring May flowers"? Seeing as how I didn't accomplish many of my March goals I almost feel like I should advance that saying a month. Though I've decided to simplify my goals for this month because I suspect I put to much on my plate for March.



What I really want to accomplish most of all is getting through a novel revision or two this year. My goals for this month are set with that in mind. April is going to be a preparation month for actual revision in May. Why May? Well one of the LiveJournal communities I belong to is doing a May writing challenge, and I chose revision for my goal for that. (The point of the challenge is a choose your own goal).

So my goals in specific:
~More world building for my mining mystery (2yn).

~Revision outline finished for mining mystery (so can revise in May).

~Be more regular about writing in my journal. Yes, I recently started an honest to goodness paper journal. I figure I can write whatever off the top of my head, along with things I observe through the course of the day.

~Work on establishing my writing schedule.

~Haiku a day

~I'd like to critique if I can fit some in with my other goals. (I'm trying not to overwhelm myself with things to do).

And slightly off topic, but I'm reading Harry Potter (again) and something Dumbledore said to Harry near the end of book 2 sticks in my mind as relating to character development: "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." I'll be keeping that in mind as I'm working on my characters more this month.

So, here's to April preparations bringing a productive May revision. I'm aiming to get through about 20k worth of my first draft, in the first of many revision passes.

Good luck to everyone else with their goals for this month.