I Feel Somewhat Foolish...

So here's the new plan! Finishing up Italian on August 11th (dunno what was up with my counting earlier. It was off, suffice to say). Writing 2.5k every day for 50k by the 20th. Starting school the 22nd. Getting shopping and organizing done before that. Translating July's efforts into Ganyi, preferably before school starts. No plans past school starting other than finishing up any other unfinisheds as quickly as possible, and then I can re-evaluate how tough things are and see what projects should be tackled next. School is pretty much first priority though, so  homework must be accomplished before projects may be done. Having never really done homework, I don't know how that'll work, honestly. We'll have to see.

I'm not going to drop Italian, but it may just be on steady hold, flashcards and what little listening and/or reading I can get done. Ganyi may be on hold somewhat after I get the translating done, too. Writing, well, I'm still going to try NaNoWriMo this November, but like I said before, school first. This is a new lesson for me. Before I can write or make a ton of origami or even probably talk to my spiffy cupcakes, I must do my homework. Study for tests. Etc. etc.

Gah! Right now I have to plot though. Just a few hours to August!

It's Amazing...

...how quickly 50k drops down to just 11k when you cut out the tangent stories. It'll probably be down a little bit more once I finish translating and line-editing. I'll start on that tomorrow, I think. That's gonna take days, though, with most all of the words needing fabricating, I imagine. I'll simplify all the sentences, though. No sense in using really fancy words for things when I don't even have the normal or simple ones. The real question is whether or not I can get it done by the end of the month. If I can, I guess there may be a short little Augustian novel in store for me...

I have a few more days to decide and cobble up a plot, or not. In the meantime, I'll be coming up with TONS of words for Ganyi, and maybe actually get it functional after this. Cool. I guess.

Language Focus or Another Novel Challenge?

Now that I'm back from vacation I guess I should figure out what to do with my almost-month left before school starts. I'm mostly caught up on Italian, although I've been skimping on those exercises. I have a lot of material in the language I could work with: things to read, things to listen to, probably I could even find a language exchange partner or someone to kinda tutor me over Skype. I have almost a whole month to be awesome at Italian!

Yeah, not really awesome, as such, but whatever. Alternatively, there's another Camp NaNo in August. So writing, or language... another language option is to work on Ganyi. Another writing option is to edit my July CampNo (totally just made that up. Probably not the first one), and translate it into Ganyi, as was the plan. Also I just found myself yesterday on a website for another conlang, a supposedly very logical one. It's a good thing I don't have a job, I guess. It could get even worse, remember that.

The other good news is I think there's really nothing major happening from now until school starting on the 22nd of August. I need to get up to the school and return a book and get my student ID card. And some shopping, clothes, supplies, etc. I hate clothes shopping. School supplies may be slightly more fun. I can work around that, I figure.

So here's the question: extra language work, or writing something new? I don't exactly have an idea for anything in particular to write in August, but that's not much of a problem. Actually, what was I thinking about just yesterday? It made me marvel at how easily I can get sidetracked into Yavn. I was looking at the clouds, I think... and... nope. Don't remember. I do remember that I was looking at the stars on vacation and thinking of creating little legends or stories around groups of them, but in Yavn they'll be said to represent different moments of the Elements working together, depending on the shape. That was it. I could write a collection of those. Maybe in like 20 days. That might be nice. Have at least a few days break before school. 50k in 20 days makes for an even 2.5k/day. I kinda like that idea. And that's not so hard compared to writing 3.5k a day like I did this month. I could probably keep up with my Italian then, and I think I'm going to be done with that on like the 11th. Wait. Earlier, I guess. How'd I get ahead of schedule? Oh well. The remaining time can be spent either working on what's next or getting through the stuff I skipped. And/or translating July CampNo into Ganyi, as was the original plan for August. Maybe I can do it all before school starts. That'd be cool.

It's Camp NaNoWriMo!

So... I'm a little late writing about it, but oh well. The wonderful people of NaNoWriMo are bringing a NaNo to us now not just in November, but in July and August as well! Anyway, I was planning on participating in this camp-themed NaNo in August, the second month, but next thing I know I'm starting July 1st, despite the fact that it means early mornings writing, interrupted by a bit of work, then late night shooting fireworks... and I decided to finish by today, because tomorrow morning I leave on vacation. Woo. WriMos make me crazy. So anyway! I kept planning on blogging from the time I heard about Camp NaNo being ready for July until now, when I'm actually getting the dang post written.

Anyway! A 14-day writing adventure requires 3,572 words per day. It was higher stress than I thought, since I usually go for 2,000 words per day, and 3,000 means it's a pretty good day. Of course, there was that weekend where I wrote 10,000 words every day, but that was only for three days and there was pretty much nothing else going on... anyway, I managed it, even with a day off and finishing a day ahead. Now I just want to finish my story before I leave, and pack, and... yeah.

It was originally going to be kind of a crash course/tourist's guide to Yavn, the country I made up. Of course, that hardly makes it to 50k, so it's full of tangent stories and things. That's fine, one of the main purposes for this was to do some worldbuildng before I go off and focus on the neighboring countries, and I get a lot of that done while writing a story. I'm going to do a quick editing swipe, getting rid of fluff and the like, and then translate it into that country's language so it can be used as a reader, and get me quite a few words made up for that, since I need to be building the vocabulary. But before I can do any of that I need to wrap up the storyline I have and get quickly through the language portion of the book. Just a rundown of Ganyi grammar and some vocabulary word placeholders and the like. A few thousand words. I'm not going to be done by the time we leave, especially since I keep chatting on Skype with all of the spiffy cupcake Camp NaNo people.

So anyway, I've managed to write 50,000 words in 13 days. Personal best, even if the words per day isn't, you can't expect to sprint a whole marathon. Back to writing!