After doing some searching, I found a nifty website that gave me all the listings of New York Times best-sellers. I had the option of choosing how to sort them, and I chose adult fiction books separated by year (rather than author or title). I used the listing of each book, author, publisher, and date to look up the matching book cover, starting from the latest 2017 best-sellers and going back to January 2010. The total number of covers I saved was 235; though, I really wanted to go back further (my original goal was to do roughly ten years, 2007-2017). However, the amount of time it was taking to complete the process was longer than I would have liked.

I used Professor Whalen’s toolkit Image Macroanalysis in Javascript to organize my images in multiple ways. It took some fiddling to get my images to be in chronological order. After messing around with file folders and file names, I finally created one large folder with each image renamed with a three digit number starting with 001 for the first book in January 2010 to 709 for the latest book in April 2017.

Overall, I am pleased with my results, though if I were given more time I would have liked to personalize the webpage even more. And feel free to take a gander at the final product.

For my own project, I am interested in comparing the covers of books made popular over the years. I could possibly narrow my search down by genre or top-rated (overall). Overall, I would like to see if the public follows the old rule “don’t judge a book by its cover” or not, since I personally believe the rule is not followed (sometimes a cover just looks so good that I am intrigued by what story it may tell). The New York Times is one of the most distinguished United States book rating lists and may be a good starting point for my project.

Through our research, we were able to show what aspects of the claim were true and how and why others were not true. For instance, the titles of the more recent articles stated along the lines of “science confirms people absorb energy from others,” when the body of text in the article itself used much less definitive language. Overall, I learned that news is hardly ever black and white, and that just because many sources repeat a claim does not mean that it is true (especially when the content of said sources is nearly word-for-word).

On another note, my group in digital studies is breaking down a Gameboy Advance for our digital archaeology project. So far, the parts are very challenging to find the history and locations. Most of my work was taken from me when my computer completely quit on me (and, yes, I tried to recover the closed Chrome tabs, but they were gone). For the first time I can remember saying, I am not optimistic about this project. It is a really cool idea and the end result is awesome for groups that can find out about their objects, but I do not think there is much hope in our Gameboy.

But nonetheless, I will try my best!

I have my own corner where I retreat to write, and a lot of the time I love it. If you can make one of those, then that’s great! Rooms and spaces to yourself are comfortable and safe, I know. But when you are not feeling it or losing direction or completely drained of inspiration, there’s one thing I find that helps.

GET OUT! In many cases, you don’t even have to drive anywhere or interact with people.

Places you can go (starting close to the origin and spreading outward): another room where you don’t normally go in, a porch, the front/backyard, a park, a library/coffeeshop/study room, any bench you can find, the list goes on. (NOTE: be careful of your surroundings, always watch out for yourself, and never put yourself knowingly in a dangerous situation!)

When the weather is nice, I like taking bike rides in my neighborhood. I started off with a small route and steadily expanded it. Some days I would go down a road I’ve never been down and look at the houses or landscaping. Even just going the same route but backwards was an entirely different experience. When I get back home, I feel recharged and sometimes even inspired.

Monotony can drain you, so change things up!

Write non-permanent scenes. Free write and see where the story goes. Don’t think, just keep it going. The parts of your story aren’t set in stone, so just play around with it!

Ask others for help. This generally helps more for little things than major parts of your story. You can provide your helper (a friend, family member, stranger…) as little or as much backstory/context. For instance, you wouldn’t have to explain much to get an opinion of what a normal response to “Can you not choke on your food when I’m trying to tell you a story?” would be. On the other hand, if you need, say, a possible ending to your short story, the person you’re asking for help may need where to start in order to help you as to where you could finish.

Write something else! You don’t have to work solely on one story, though do be careful not to mix up characters/personalities or plot lines. It’s okay to not be inspired for one story after you work for a while on it and instead turn to a different one.

Read! You cannot be a good writer without reading. Sometimes you simply won’t be in the right mindset for writing. So take a break from writing and instead read an interesting book. This can get your creative juices flowing.

Do something else! This is a bit broad, I know, but hear me out. Get another task in your life done and come back to writing later. Some possibilities: clean your room, make yourself a meal (nothing instant), do some studying/homework, go through your clothes and see if there’s anything you no longer need and can donate, take a shower/bath, go on a walk/run/bike ride, meditate, call a friend/family member and catch up, etc.  Some of these may not sound fun, but you’ll at least feel accomplished when you’ve completed something.

All of these methods are merely suggestions for things you can do to help work through your writer’s block. None of these are sure-fire, and you might not get unstuck right away. But do not worry, you will be okay and things will work out!

Treat your characters as real people!

You may have learned about static/flat and dynamic/round characters in English classes. Those labels speak of the role of a character in a story: do they change or not? But just because a character doesn’t appear to change does not mean that they should be written stereotypically or as just kind of … there. Lesser characters should be just like the people in your life; you may not know much about them and they may always appear the same, but they are still human. Moreover, all characters are just like people, with favorite colors and least favorite foods and a preference of music genre, et cetera. Yes, you don’t reveal all of this information in your stories, but it’s nice to think about in order to make the character believable and real.

So, you need a character and have no specifications. How do you go about creating (literary) life?

One suggestion is to base characters after people you experience in your life. Since the real world provides the most realistic examples of people (go figure), you can make a lot out of observing others. You can even base a character off of someone you know well. The other day, my creative writing professor told me something:

Basing a character on someone could mean making the character like someone or even unlike someone.

With that alone there are a large variety of options for you to start with.

Don’t want to leave your room? Search online for character ideas (here are some visual examples on Pintrest). Mix and match characteristics you like to create someone you want to write about!

Lastly, one thing I like to do with my more major characters is to create what I call “character profiles.” In these, I focus in-depth about a character’s appearance, personality, relationships, goals, etc. Here is an amazing, though extensive, profile template. Don’t worry about not filling it all out immediately, or even ever!

Above all else, make each character their own person. I have seen myself recycle character traits through multiple other characters, but this just leads to confusion on who is really who. This isn’t saying you can’t alter an old character to make a new and improved version, however. Though it may sound cliche, make each character unique.

To start: limit your mindless scrolling. I frequently find myself falling victim to mindless scrolling. Whether it be tumblr or Facebook, once I get started, it is hard to stop. I even find myself subconsciously typing in the name of either site when I open a new tab in my browser. After this started happening, I became suddenly self-aware of how little these habits contribute to my life.

First Alternative: set a time limit. You can indulge in social media without getting swallowed up into it. This can be tricky as you will be going down, post by post, and all of a sudden a couple hours have passed! Maybe instead of a “time limit,” you could just be wary of your length of stay on a site in general.

Second Alternative: reevaluate how you want to spend your time. Do you want to spend your precious time wasting away on a mind-numbing website (with the occasional laugh or renewed insight) or doing something that has meaning to you? A thought that pops into my head when I am mindlessly on the internet is, All of this time I’ve been online I could have been READING! I have many books in my queue (and not my tumblr queue) and I realized I am not getting through them near as fast as I would like because I spend so little time actually reading.

How long can I go like this and still call myself a bookworm?

So my challenge, for me and for my fellow reader/writers, is to get away from distractions and be mindful of how what you are spending time doing is affecting you.

-Momento mori

As I mentioned in my Daily Writing post, I try to keep a tiny notebook on me at all times. When I don’t have that, I jot things down in the notes section of my phone (smart phones aren’t totally a bad thing). When a landscape forces me to stop walking, when a person’s style catches my eye, or when an intriguing event happens to or around me, I jot it down.* For example:

Clouds carved like scales, golden light-shining through the cracks with deep blue in the steeper areas;

A book so cheaply published it has the wrong summary on its back

When I need a little help developing a character or scene, I can just look through these little bits I have written down for instant help. Also, taking the time to notice someone/something and write down specific details only boosts descriptive skills.

Dreams are another great source of material, usable or not. When I took a class on psychology in high school, one project had me write down my dreams in a “Dream Journal” as soon as I woke up in the morning. The week that I did this, I remembered much more of my dreams than I normally did, though some of the things I wrote down still completely escaped my memory. The best thing about this is there is a bunch of scenes, locations, and possibly characters created all without you having to try!

Overall, inspiration is bursting from your experiences. All you have to do it document it and save it for when you need it later!

*blurbs do not need to be in complete sentences