Amruniel's Ramblings

In a stunning turn of events, you all find myself still alive and kicking ;)

I know, it must have seemed as if the earth has opened up and swallowed me up without any warning, and for that I'm really sorry. I want to apologize particularly to those of you who worried about me, sent me PMs, etc.! Mea culpa!

For those of you happy to know I'm still here and not interested in anything more, I'd suggest to stop reading here now and go on to do something you'd rather do :)


For everyone else - here's a (short and inadequate) explanation:

As you might remember, my last post was on June 20th, where I (probably drunk on some celebratory birthday bubbly) stated I was hopeful to manage to keep on writing halfway regularly despite the exam looming...
...well, no.
Turned out, there was WAY more material to study than I had anticipated. As in TONS more. That woman drove me crazy over the course of the semester, but she really, really hit rock bottom in my favours during those last 10 days of June.
So, I more or less spent the remainder of the month non-stop studying, with the occasional break for food or sleep.
I somehow managed to actually got summing up the material done the night before the exam, with less than 24 hours of "real" study time on my hands. Despite that, the exam went rather well after all (having the first look at the questions my the prof went up a notch in my favours again, let me tell you ;) ).

Riding on a high after having finished the semester FINALLY, I actually did fire up the computer shortly before midnight on the 30th and created a cabin at CampNaNo for me. I really was all psyched up about tackling another month of writing and possibly even get the whole fic as close to finished as possible.

Fast forward to the next day and I found myself in the situation to really, really, really have no energy left to do anything, least of all to make myself turn on the computer and tackle Day 1 of CampNaNo. I, for the first time in months and months, couldn't make myself even THINK about the fic. I was too tired, too wrung out.

If I have learned any lesson those past years, then to listen to my body and my mind when they tell me it's too much. So, for once, I did the sensible thing and decided to give myself the weekend off and start tackling the writing a couple days late.

On Monday, I honestly didn't feel much better about writing. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea to go back to the story and wrestle the scene I was writing into something I actually liked. I had no inclination, no impetus, and frankly no energy to sit down and struggle through something I wasn't feeling at the moment, just for the sake of hitting some arbitrary word-goal I had self-imposed on myself.
And truth to be told, it wasn't just the writing - it was the very simple act of switching on the computer that seemed like too much of an effort for me.

I was tired, unhappy, unmotivated and altogether in no mood to even browse the internet, let alone engage with people or do something productive.

I promised myself to get back to it the next day on a daily basis, but each and every new day I lacked the motivation to do anything. It just felt RIGHT to not be writing for the moment. To not be posting stuff or reading posts or browse or just generally kill time in front of the screen.

Then Himself told me he would go on a week-long climbing tip with a friend of our the next week, and I found myself in the funny situation of life imitating art big time. In the fic, I have two OCs that are based on exactly those two people leaving for a climbing vacation... and now the real them actually did the same.
A sign, right?
So, I was pretty adamant about me using the time alone to make up for lost writing-time and hammer out a couple thousand words each day.

That was, until I actually found myself alone and all my good plans going down the drain due to immense demotivation and the bad timing that led to me discovering a new YouTube channel I got obsessed with. A channel that has been in existence for 11 years, so you can guess how many videos there are for me to catch up on....

So, another week went by with me NOT firing up the computer.

Then, Himself was back again, and with him a couple of things we had to attend, a few outings we wanted to do, and a handful of evenings spent doing nothing at all, just enjoying the summer, the rest of the month passed as well, hardly noticed by me.

And now, it's August and I am... back, but not back?
I certainly needed the time off the computer and away from my story, and while it completely threw my intended schedule off, the interruption also freed me from said schedule, giving me enough peace of mind to be okay with the fic possibly not being finished during the summer, and possibly even not finished before the next "real" NaNoWriMo.

So, my plan for now is to enjoy (and survive) the current heat wave, and try to get some writing done here and there with no set schedule or fixed word-goals for the moment until I get back into the flow or hit a part of the story that forces me to keep on writing and regularly at that.

I will, however, try to set aside an evening or two each week to work my way through the waiting posts and comments that have accumulated over the past months.
In short, I'll be here and yet not here for the foreseeable future, and as usual I'll keep you updated on any writing that gets done around here :)

I hope you're all having a lovely, wonderful and relaxing summer!
*hugs*

I have been out of sight (though hopefully not out of mind) these last days.
It turned out that the exam I'll be taking on Thursday requires a LOT more studying than I anticipated.... (of course it did... it always does *rolls eyes at herself*)

Anyway, I actually wanted to spend this evening giving my brain a break and get some writing done, but alas, I opted to go climbing instead this afternoon, so I'm stuck with doing this instead tonight:



And yes - if I had known that I would have to torment my poor self with geography, I sure as fuck wouldn't have signed up for that exam... Damn!

So, if anyone of you has a handy trick how I'll be able to wrap my head around locating the individual states on the map of the US, please do share! (As it stands, I feel reasonable confident that I might be able to locate Texas, California and possibly Florida... which really doesn't help my confidence about passing the test at all...........)

Anyway, I wanted to say I'm more or less alive still, I'm thinking about you and I'll be back catching up with you on Thursday (hopefully) or Friday (at the very latest)!

*hugs you all*

Lovelies, I've survived my damn exam!

I am, however completely braindead and will therefore take the evening off :) I'll check in with all of you and the posts, fics (yaaaaaay!), and comments waiting for me tomorrow... and finally get back to my writing...

Hugs to you all!

And because it made my day so much brighter today, I'll leave this pic here despite you all obviously knowing it ;) :

So I've just attended a lecture about Hitchcock, Freud and Psychoanalysis. The lecturer is the prof I've been writing my thesis for, so I took the opportunity and handed it in right before the lecture.

Anyway, I was sitting there, listening to his explanations about why Hichcock's opening sequences are always voyeuristic and which impact Freud's theories have on these sequences, and he started showing examples... And there, right in front of my eyes on the screen appeared a very familiar face - Viggo lounging in bed in the opening scenes of the Psycho re-make :D

I'll take that as a good sign, yes? ;)

Watched the last of my three thesis films last night - "The Revenant".

What a movie!

A story-line that could have bored me to death (and quite frankly can be easily told in two sentences without losing anything important) has kept me in its thrall for two-and-a-half hours.

It's mostly down to Leonardo DiCaprio's acting that the movie worked as well as it did for me. I know that there are quite a few people out there who think that while Leo did deserve his Oscar, it shouldn't have been awarded for this movie. I completely disagree. Carrying a film while being alone on screen AND without dialogue for most of the time is an achievement that can't be valued too much. Leo played many iconic roles in his career, but I honestly think that this role is the one that demanded the most of him in terms of pure acting.

Another thing that impressed me deeply are the visuals of the movie. There visual language throughout the whole film is unbelievably impressive. There are so many gems to be found in seemingly "simple" nature takes, there are great shots and stunning camera sequences. It's a joy to watch - and I'm quite convinced that one could enjoy the film without any sound or dialogue as well, the visuals are that good.

I'm impressed and I'm really looking forward to watching it again (well, apart from various really graphic scenes that made me feel a bit nauseous :) ).

So today I've finally started to watch one of the three films I'll discuss in my bachelor's thesis... I'll need to fit in the other two before Thursday and -as usual- I have no idea how I'll find the time to do that.

Anyway - today I've watched "The Martian" and while it's been a bit better than I have anticipated, it's still on my "wouldn't re-watch if I didn't have to"-list.
I've been bored throughout most of the first half - it's soooooo predictable it's painful. Every single accident or setback comes with advanced warning, no surprises at all... and if you've seen the trailer you know the better bits already. The second half did pass a lot faster and while it had a lot more eye-rolling are-you-fucking-kidding-me moments, it also had a lot more of the one redeeming feature:

Sean Bean!

So yeah, he absolutely saved me from taking a lot more breaks than I did anyway. I practically lived from one of his appearances to the next ;) Although I'm sorely disappointed by the missed opportunity of slipping a "One does not simply..."-reference into the movie. I mean, come on! The guy who wrote the book is very probably a nerdy guy, I'm reasonable sure that quite a lot of other geeky or nerdy guys (and girls) worked on adapting the book or the making of the movie in general and NOBODY thought of slipping the quote into the script? REALLY? That's just plain dumb! *rants*

Another thing I'm completely taken aback by? The fact that this is a Ridley Scott movie! I'll be honest and say that I didn't even think about finding out who directed the movie beforehand, and I honestly did not catch Ridley's usual style while watching the film, so it quite took me by surprise when the credits started rolling and I first saw who directed the thing.
Thinking back now I do see some short sequences where Ridley's usual style shone through (most noticeable his tendency to have things floating around - be it pollen or snow or dust... there's a scene outside the Chinese Space Agency where I did think "now THAT's a nice shot" while watching, and now I realize that it's one of the few scenes with floating stuff, in this case snow).
Anyway - since I do think the film is rather meagre all in all I wonder how bad it would have been if somebody else would have directed it. Well, good luck for me, I guess :)

After watching the film I did take some notes and had to thumb through the book that's the basis of my thesis for some detail I have forgotten since the last time I've read it... and while I turned the pages I remembered a picture that sprang out on me the first time around:


("The Writer's Journey" by Christopher Vogler, p. 116)

Doesn't it look like Arwen and Legolas strolling through the woods in Rivendell or Lorien? Or is it just my imagination?