Snapshot 10/31/20 // “The Circus, At Night”

Currently listening: “Season of the Witch” – Lana Del Rey
Currently watching: The Haunting of Bly Manor
Currently playing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Currently reading: ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Cloudy skies and misty air are lingering outside my window as I type this, and it fits. October and I have been on the same wavelength all month and I am here for it. A lot of fun fall activities fell into my life these past few weeks and finally I feel good. My life feels like it is starting to come together, and honestly perfect timing because NaNo is right around the corner. Or rather by the time this is posted… knocking at the door.

October Goals:

1. Continue researching, world building, prewriting, plotting, outlining & WRITING my WIP! Check! My word count is up and I am so happy!!! I don’t want to jinx anything because I’m superstitious like that so I won’t share too much but… that first draft is getting WRITTEN. Mark it, guys. Making history over here, lol 😀
2. Become more interactive on social media! Check! I’m doing it! I’m doing it!
3. Continue making submissions with my writing! Failure…. but I’m working on it. I did more than I did last month at least! (like opened one new tab, lol…) It will probably be a failure next month too if I’m being real with NaNo going on, but not giving up!
4. Read & finish three books! Check! Not exactly all three books that I planned but I finished my two re-reads Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. As well as Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. All fantastic reads that I highly recommend! I’m about a third of the way through reading Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and enjoying it so far! Waiting for those twists!
5. Rewatch The Haunting of Hill House, and revisit Supernatural S4 and Gilmore Girls S1! Check! Supernatural and Gilmore Girls are like my mac and cheese and buttered biscuits. I also finished The Haunting of Hill House and loved it just as much the second time around! The Haunting of Bly Manor I’m more than halfway through and can I just say, I love Victoria Pedretti? Like, I really do. I hope by the end it hits me as much as Hill House did and right now I’m expecting it too.
6. Watch Halloween movies! Check! Halloweentown, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Over the Garden Wall, and Corpse Bride, among others. Even Hocus Pocus. Okay, okay I relent. It’s a classic and I’m a little less bitter about Binx now. (SPOILER) He’s happy in heaven and now that I’m no longer seven I accept this conclusion. (SPOILER END).
7. Go apple and pumpkin picking! Check, check! Even though I got EATEN and I mean EATEN by mosquitos (my ankle swelled up like a balloon and got infected, yuck!) it was so worth it. I had a blast! I posted some pics on my Insta if you are curious!
8. Make Halloween cookies! Check. And they were delicious.
9. Eat healthier! Mostly check. I had three bad days this entire month, but that is less than September. The other 28 days I followed the moderation plan so this is a win. Building healthy habits never felt so gooooood! One day at a time. One cookie at a time. One brussel sprout at a time!
10. Look at the ocean one last time! Check and it was magical ❤ (I also had pumpkin spice ice cream for the first time and damn, it’s good! )

November (the month where I am alive and dead at the same time) Goals:

1. Continue researching, world building, prewriting, plotting, outlining & WRITING my WIP! OOOOOOOOOHHHHHH IT’S ON NANO. I’M CALLING YOU OUT. My username is JLynn047 if you want to be friends and cheer each other on!
2. Become more interactive on social media! My handle is @jaiiiilynn4 for both Insta and Twitter if you want to connect! I’m gonna try to rage on Twitter all month about my writing frustrations (and hopefully victories!). Feel free to commiserate (and revel hopefully!) with me!
3. Continue making submissions with my writing! I’m calling it now, this probably won’t happen cause I’ll be busy with NaNo but I don’t want to forget this goal.
4. Continue to eat healthier! Moderation and NO stress eating. (Even though I will probably be emotional and stressed all month but I will resisttttttt through mindfulness and sheer force of will.)

What I Read:

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–Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Everyone needs to read this book. I don’t care if it’s not your genre. I don’t care if your TBR list is huge. I don’t care if you don’t read. I don’t care if you are a nihilist. This book is bigger than us. It should be on the essential reading list for humanity. Everyone knows the Holocaust. It’s THE most iconic tragedy in the history of civilization. Dr. Frankl, the author of this book, experienced this terrible blight on humanity first hand. He had the option to escape, but he chose to stay with his parents who couldn’t leave and in turn all of them ended up in a concentration camp. A lot of us, thankfully, today will never know those horrors first hand. But he did. And he survived. His experience shaped the motivation and learnings in this psychology book. The main point that I took away was that man needs meaning to survive and he finds that in either 1) his vocation 2) a person or 3) courage in the face of an unimaginable situation. Meaning, meaning, meaning… what is the point of this life? Why are we here? Nihilists will argue that everything is random, there is no meaning. Some think the point of life is to chase happiness. Some think power is everything. But Dr. Frankl alludes the more you chase those things the harder they will be to find. If your life has meaning then you have the will to go on, and the success and happiness will follow. If you think everything has no point and that all is random what’s to stop you from bringing about another Holocaust? There’s no point right? Deep down we all know that not to be true. We are human, we feel, we live, we suffer. We suffer and suffer and suffer. Would it make you happier to reason it towards nothing, or everything. I only glazed over the key points here and there is so so much more. If I haven’t said it already, just read the book. 
–Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. This one was a reread, one that I hadn’t exactly planned on but one that happened anyway. This book just screams October. I read it for the first time last year and you can read my original review here. Looks like I did end up re-reading it like I mentioned in my review last year, haha!! I didn’t disappoint my past self. Maybe I will just end up rereading it every year. Who knows? Pretty much all the same feelings, but what is different this time is that I think I understand the book even more. Its nostalgia, its structure…. and its view of the universal personal conflict of being human. There is just something about this book. Something… Maybe next year I’ll be able to tell you what it is when I probably end up reading it again.
–The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I love this book, so much. My soul and this book …. I can’t even articulate it. I just love this book, so much.

What I’ll Be Writing:

• Poetry- posted every Wednesday
• Writing Is Hard | WIP Writing Update- posted in the middle of the month
• Snapshot! Monthly Recap- posted the last day of every month
• Announcements- posted as needed

All of my fiction writings are independent of each other and stand alone so no need to read any of the previous work to understand. If you want more information about any of the above, you can check out the About page on my site or just click here.

I might do another discussion post… depends on how much time I’ll have (not much…) but we shall see. Never say never and inspiration might strike again!

My WIP post this month will also be very heavily NaNo related FYI just so you guys are forewarned! I might check in with mini updates for NaNo every now and then too besides my big monthly WIP update but I haven’t decided yet. (More like anxiety rearing its ugly head that I am taking on too much and perfectionism screaming DO IT ANYWAY…) Well…

October Round Up of Posts from Awesome People:

• Sofii @ A Book. A Thought. “Discussion Post | How to Balance Blogging, Reading & Writing with Daily Life“
• Mary Drover @ Mary and the Words “The Burton Theory“
• Cam @ Camillea Reads “HOCUS FOCUS: A Non-Spooky Guide to Preptober and NaNoWriMo”
• Luna @ Luna is Writing “Poem #340“
• Margaret @ Weird Zeal “The best piece of writing advice ft. six amazing bloggers“
• Annie @ Zoelogist “Thinking about what I want to say“
• The Orangutan Librarian “Does Book Twitter Actually Reflect the Reading Community?“

I read so many fun, thought provoking and inspiring posts this month! To my fellow bloggers, great work guys!!

My Round Up of October Posts:

• Vignette #34 “Milkweed Manor”
• “The Swing”
• To Wear the Mask, or To Not Wear the Mask? | A Discussion Post about Halloween and Our Costumes
• “Ghosting Me”
• Writing is Hard | WIP | October 2020 | Catching All Those Falling Stars
• “Moon”
• The NaNoWriMo 20 Questions Tag! (2020 Edition)
• “Dirge”

To NaNoWriMo my fellow writers! May productivity rain and may we all survive the storm!! ROARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Oh, and btw… Happy Halloween 😉

Till next time,

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