As you can see on my word-counter I reached the 50,000+ mark on my story. What's even better though is... for the first time ever I've completed a story! While The Obsidian Shifters is still incomplete Temerity is (as far as first drafts go) complete! It desperately needs a rewrite, though. I'm planning on making it into a short story (my best guess at the moment is that it might go down to about 35-40k words, but it might end up being slightly more or less than that estimate) for now.
I reached the magical fifty thousand during Sunday's write in. To be honest it didn't even feel so great... I'm just happy it's over! Even though the emotional part seems to be missing I'm still pretty proud of my achievement.
Japari
Monday I went to work at Japari for the last time ever. (Although I'm still going to the staff lunch Friday next week) I had hoped for an exciting day but in the end I just sat around in the staffroom for most of the day - they didn't need my help at all. Oh well, we had a nice brunch made by the team of therapists which included anything from pancakes, sausages to crackers + cheese and hummus to strawberries and samoosas. Pretty good! I wasn't very emotional, not as I had expected to be, but it's a strange idea that my Japari days are now officially over!
The staff room
The Japari magazine - it was lot of fun (and a challenge) to get the whole school into the picture and everyone looking cheery ;)
Because I'm not allowed to show pictures of random students without permission I could only take pictures of my cousin - so lucky he goes to school at Japari!
New plans
With less than 20 days to go before I fly back home I need to start making some plans! My diary is filled with 'words+10' 'blog post' 'work on religion assignment' and other such notes. I'm trying hard to complete my portfolios before going back home (mainly because I'm actually really lazy and like to relax during test weeks and whenever it's possible... although 'relax' means 'being busy with my own projects' more often than not). But other than that I'm already thinking of new projects for next year!
I love writing, somehow I manage to forget that in between events such as Julnowrimo and Nanowrimo. So for 2011 I want to do things differently. Instead of aiming for huge projects I'm going to do what I call my 'short story challenge'. 12 months in the year... so let's write 12 short stories (5,000 - 15,000 words each). My rules? The stories have to be written during the actual month - so if I end up writing two stories in March, it won't count for April. This means that no matter how much I do, I still have to write something every month of the year.
Why five thousand as my minimum? Well, in two days of writing I can easily get to the 5k if I need/want to. So even during a really busy month I can manage to get to my goal - without neglecting other responsibilities. It also means I can safely try to do Julno and Nano, too (finish in 20~25 days and there's enough time in the month left to write a short story).
I want this challenge to be as much fun as possible so I'm leaving the themes and other 'rules' open for now. Mostly.
Of the 12 stories:
- 1 has to be in Dutch
- 1 has to be sci-fi/fantasy/horror so that I can submit it to a contest (in October) (sadly, also needs to be in Dutch)
- one will be written using code-switching whenever it feels natural (English/Dutch). (I guess that counts as experimental writing, hm?)
- 1 will be a fanfic
- 1 needs to be realistic fiction
If I end up writing realistic fiction in Dutch that counts for two of my goals, though...
I'm already looking forward to January! I might attempt my code-switching short story first, it sounds like a challenge but also like a lot of fun! (Finally I'll be 'allowed' to write freely mixing languages as I do in my thoughts and in conversations with family/friends :))
(I love code-switching now, although I used to hate it when I was younger...)
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