Making New Year resolutions has long been a tradition with the living, but shouldn’t the undead have the opportunity to better themselves as well? We would expect their resolutions to differ somewhat from the norm, however. While the average person might resolve to join a gym or spend more quality time with their family, such things might prove less than practical for a zombie. Considering their nature and properties, here’s what a top ten list of zombie resolutions might look like:
BRAAAAIINS!!!
Everything begins and ends with this in the realm of zombie, so would this be that big of a surprise?
A regular routine of shambling
No one would envision the walking dead taking to the treadmill, but they could at least get out there and shuffle and moan more often. They don’t have to master the Thriller routine, but practicing it…
As some of you may know, I recently completed a novel for the first time. After two failed attempts to complete manuscripts before, just the fact that I wrote “The End” was an accomplishment to me. I took some time away from the book in attempt to return to it with a fresh perspective. What I saw upon my return, however, shocked and disappointed me. My finished book, the one I spent three months writing, was not worth reading. Many find it difficult to admit this about their own creations – believe me, it took me a while to accept the fact myself. In spite of how disappointed I was by the first draft of my book, there are invaluable lessons that I learned throughout the process.
Many might say that I shouldn’t put so much pressure on myself, a first draft is never as good, and it was only…
If you want to follow the rest of the blogs on this WEEKEND COFFEE SHARE – or – if you have a writing blog and want to take part in the WEEKEND COFFEE SHARE it will be going on every weekend, usually starting on Saturday – and if you click on this picture it will take you directly to the blog where it all started and you can figure it out from there.
If we were having coffee you would marvel at the stoutness of my cup of coffee.
“How can you drink it like that?” you would ask me. “That coffee is so strong it bent the spoon that you tried to stir it with.”
“I am channeling Uri Geller,” I would tell you. “By this time next week I hope to be bending shovels.”
If we are having coffee you are probably perched upon a teetering stack of books in my writing office – on account of that is where I drink most of my coffee. I keep a large mug sitting on the right hand of my desk, amidst a clutter of notes (which is the proper collective term for that heap of scrawled sentences and you-ought-to-remember notes that I keep on the right/left/center/under-bottom of my desk).
I might offer you a coffee but more as likely you will have brought your own coffee – something boring and under-caffeinated from Tim Horton’s in a lipstick stained paper cup, even though you don’t actually wear lipstick. I will warn you not to throw your empty coffee cup onto my lawn and you will humor my request on account of I am big and hairy and you have a keen and innate sense of personal survival.
I explain to you that because I live in a small brick bunker located kitty-corner to two of the city’s busiest shopping malls that I must fight a constant battle against the detritus of consumerism. Once a week I must take up my pair of barbecue tongs and a green industrial-strength garbage bag and wander about my front and backyard and around my rose hedge, looking like some kind of a pathetic homeless neatness freak as I tong up the thousand or so Tim Hortons mugs that have blown upon my lawn throughout the week.
“It is my personal fitness program,” I tell you. “I call it litter pick-up yoga techniques and it is really good for cleansing my chakras, whatever the hell they are supposed to be.”
I would warn you that if you ask me “What am I writing?” that I will most likely have to beat you to death with an empty ball point pen, because I am ALWAYS writing about three or four projects ahead of myself and am in a state of constant time-warpidity.
“You don’t seem to be all that perky this morning,” you note. “Should I come back another day?”
Perky?
PERKY???
All kidding aside, let me tell you what I have been up to this week. There was some snow shoveling early in the week but the rain we have had mostly washed all the snow away – which is fine by me.
I am getting ready for a public talk on Monday evening at the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia – which has me a little nervous, just because even though I am quite comfortable teaching my writing and storytelling techniques to classrooms of kids from kindergarten to Grade 12 I am VERY nervous getting up in front of a room full of my writing peers.
Speaking of kids I will give my first Writers In The School presentation this coming Thursday morning at the Ian Forsyth Elementary. I love this part of my job – meeting and talking with all of those kids about how to create a story, either written or told. I have been a member of the Writers In The School for a whole lot of years and I really enjoy seeing those kids get excited about writing and storytelling.
As for my own writing – well, I am working on completing one novel, trying to rewrite another and trying to lay out the basics for a third. I am a bit of a multi-tasker.
Well, that is all that I have to tell you today.
Thanks for having coffee with me.
Now let me get back to my writing, would you?
🙂
yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
If you enjoyed this blog entry why don’t you do one of the very best things that you can do for a writer and pick up one of my e-books?
This is the start of a brand new series of blog-shares started out by the good folks at PART TIME MONSTER. Each weekend I intend to take part in this collaborative blog.