November blog

A lot of weird and varied stuff happened this month. I intended to focus my work this month on the outline for the book. I ended up putting a lot more effort into other parts of the project, but ones that were just as important. I did spend quite a few days adding possible subjects to the basic outline. I also broke down several other books I own that are concerning similar subjects and looked at how they were organized and how they approached different subjects. I got a lot of really intriguing data from doing this and now have a much better grasp as to what my outline should look like. I also spent the 10th at the Fifth Annual Old Mill ParaCon in Dundee, Michigan. That was a load of fun. I was there from 5 am until 10 pm. I gave my road lecture (which I actually had some changes specifically for the event put in), participated in a ghost hunt, spent some time in their records and files, hung out with other researcher and bounced my theories and ideas off of them, and sold some books. It was easily one of the best events I attended and really helped me with developing my theories and ideas into a more mature aspect. After the event, I began to try to track down a possible haunted road in Ohio that might have been the origin of several legends that I've found floating around while researching. I received this lead from another investigator at the conference. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything useful, and I doubt that the road that was mentioned exists or even existed at any point.
I think initiative was shown when I spent some time looking at the outlines and organization of other books that are similar to what I intend my book to look like. Without doing this, it would be much more difficult to write a cohesive outline with any flow between the different subjects.
A major highlight of my month was the Old Mill ParaCon in Dundee. I got to meet some researchers I grew up watching on television such as Dustin Parri from Ghost Hunters International and hang out with some old friends of mine such as John Tenney and Greg and Dinah Newkirk.
I learned a lot about how the paranormal field writes and organizes books. I also noticed the differences between different publication companies and how they layout books and how they want books organized. For example, Llewellyn Publications prefers their books to be divided into 10-20 larger chapters with about 20 smaller sections within each chapter. Contrarily, New Page Books prefers their books to be divided into about 15 chapters with very few different smaller sections expressly noted in the work. I examined books from ten different large to medium sized anomalous subject publishers and denoted the differences and similarities between their layout and outlines. I also learned quite a bit about various bridges in Ohio in my fruitless attempt to track down an anomalous bridge. Finally, I did some targeted research concerning haunted roads and bridges in Michigan for the Old Mill ParaCon. The legends in that state tend to be pretty similar to Ohio's, which is incredibly interesting.
A major challenge I overcame during the month was taking time to work on my project when I had absolutely no motivation to do so. I had quite a few massive personal problems come up during the course of the month and due to this I quickly lost any motivation to do any work. I managed to motivate myself by setting personal rules. If I did not get A or B done, I could not do C. I kept myself from doing nothing by playing video games and reading comic books with this method. I was just sad for a lot of the month and just wanted to spend all of my time in fictional worlds, doing no research or work. I am just now coming out of my funk and I am really looking forward to finishing my outline and to start working on the first draft of my book.
I am really looking forward to starting the first draft of my book. I am getting tired of the endless outline work and the endless research so the actual writing of the thing is going to be a nice breath of fresh air once I finally get to it. I expect I will have a lot more time concerning the project because of accelerated term.

The infamous John Tenney and I at the Old Mill ParaCon immediately after we realized we had never taken a picture together before.