Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Surely that makes some semblance of sense. Christmas Eve is tomorrow, which is the day before Christmas, so it's Christmas Eve Eve today. Anyway, I had actual content today, at least a little bit... oh yeah! I managed to tear myself away from Minecraft enough to get my BFS goals sorted out. Here we go, in order of when they're to be accomplished.

• Participate in NaBloPoMo (January)
• Take the ACT again (February 12th)
• Finish Fictionpress story (February 25th)
• Finish Latin Course (March 11th)
• Edit Crystal Frontier (May 25th)
• Complete Italian course (March 13th - August 11th)
• Write/Translate a story in/into Ganyi. Say, at least 5,000 words? (October 31st)
• Participate in NaNoWriMo (November)

There. That gives me all of December off for relaxation and finals, since I imagine I'll be in college then. That's why the majority of these goals are before school would start. I can only cram so much into those months though, so I've got my Ganyi goal just to be finished before November. November is November, after all.

I should probably explain and quantify these goals. NaBloPoMo will be not quite daily. I'll take Sundays off, but I'll plan to post every other day of the week. The ACT is the ACT, but my goal is to get a better math score, since I now know at least something of Trigonometric Functions. That Fictionpress story just needs finishing, and I'd like it to be done by March, which is NaNoEdMo. I plan to start editing Crystal Frontier then, and I just figured I'd give myself extra time for that.

Wow, the school year's not even quite done for me yet. I'm a little tired of not finishing things, so my latin course will be done before school's out, and then I start my new Italian book, which I would like finished by the time I start college, wherever that happens to be. It probably won't start until after the 11th, right? They already start sickeningly early. Anyway! short summer for me.

My Ganyi goal may be put off for a while, and/or just take a long time. It doesn't have to be long, just 5,000 words, but it's in a different language, and one I'm making up, no less. That doesn't particularly make things easier.

November is NaNoWriMo. This is an invariable law of the universe. I will participate in NaNoWriMo, and then I will pass out, wake up, and most likely begin studying for finals. Thus the empty December.

Just because I want to rehash everything, my month-by-month schedule looks like this:

January: NaBloPoMo, Latin, Fictionpress, School

February: ACT, Latin, Fictionpress, School

March: Crystal Frontier, Latin, Italian, School

May: Crystal Frontier, Italian, School

June: Italian

July: Italian, probably at least start on the Ganyi thing

August: Italian, Ganyi, College

September: Ganyi, College, plotting?

October: Ganyi, College, Plotting

November: NaNoWriMo, College

December: Finals

Ok then! June is empty. That'll probably be when any summer noveling gets done.

Uhm, that's probably enough for now, yeah?

Hmm... It's December...

Which means I suppose it's time to think about Big Fun Scary Goals. Unfortunately, a year is kind of a vague deadline to finish these things, so I may take a more structured approach. Brainstorming stuff, then. For today's post, we'll start with the stuff I'd like to get done:

• Work Italian into an actual conversational language for myself
• Begin work on Swahili
• Get Ganyi somewhat functional
• Finish editing Crystal Frontier
• Maybe get a little bit of a plot on paper for yet another draft of Crystal Glare?
• Participate in NaBloPoMo (I'm thinking January for this? Maybe a little modified to take Sundays off)
• Take the ACT and get a better score
• Find a college
• Start college
• Finish that one Yavn story I've been putting on Fictionpress and get the whole thing on there. That means editing the dang thing too.
• Get another summer novel written, I suppose
• Of course win NaNoWriMo.
• Wait, maybe make that help make sure my mom wins NaNoWriMo this year, whether I do or not.
• So maybe I should make that "finish NaNoWriMo in a week or two so my mom can have the rest of the month to write her brains out."
• Ouch. 50,000 words in a week.
• Oh, and I wouldn't mind actually finishing my Latin course either. It's helpful for language learning and making, I've found. Stupid cases and tenses and conjugations.

Hm, lots of bullets xD anyway, somebody remind me next week or something to get these into monthly schedules or something. I was thinking maybe finishing my Italian and Latin courses by September, and when school starts I start Swahili, under the careful tutorship of my parents and maybe a few more books. Ganyi perhaps should be put into the actionable goal of a novel or so many stories written in the language.

Speaking of! I need to do another worldbuilding novel for another country. I think it's going to be a nomadic people, and their language is gonna be an isolating one. I should learn Mandarin for research on that, I guess.

Languages

For lack of a better subject to blog on, I'll ramble about languages in general a bit today. Or maybe you'll get lucky and I'll find something more interesting to ramble about, change gears, and then get tired of typing and give you an extra-short post.

Or, if you're unlucky, I'll ramble about languages, think of something else to ramble about, and just add it on to the end. Hm... ideas come already. Maybe I should save a few for later. Nah.

Anyway, I was talking about languages. At the moment I've been a little obsessed with them. I have a bit of a list in my head of languages I want to learn, in approximate order. First I need to get Italian to a good spot, and finish my Latin course. I don't care a whole lot about speaking Latin, seeing as it's a dead language, but I might as well finish my course. After that... I'd like to learn Swahili, and then German, or maybe Russian. Japanese is in there somewhere too... I think farther down the list though. It may move up or down, depending. Oh! And Spanish and French are both on there somewhere. I'm already on Italian and Latin, so I might as well add a few more Romance languages into the mix. They'll be piece of cake, relatively, and they say every language you learn makes the next one easier. Maybe after Swahili I'll learn Spanish. It'd be a useful one, unlike all the others I've been learning so far.

Oh, and there's Ganyi, the language I'm currently making up personal use. That'll be an ongoing project too. So I have four Romance languages (if I include Latin), uh... whatever German and Russian are, I think they're similar-ish, an oriental language, one based off of Bantu (that'd be Swahili), and one I'm making myself. Yikes. Stripes. I hope I like linguistics.

You know, I think I might. Maybe I could major in that. Not like I know exactly what jobs are in linguistics, but does that matter? I guess it does. Usually a person picks a major on what job they want. Can I pick a job based on the major I want? Will I like that job? I bet I can find something I like in just about any field, right? Well, maybe not fashion design, but you know what I mean.

Uhm... I actually had another thing to say. Oh! I actually got up this morning and did some plotting for this November's novel. It's got an exciting, if perhaps cliche, beginning. I just need an ending. It deals with revenge, and although I try not to care about cliches, I can't quite stand to write a novel if it's not interesting. I'm trying to decide if my character goes through with her revenge or not...

Oh never mind. Resolved. Yay for writing a post over multiple hours! Uhm, whatever else I had to say, I forgot.

More plotting tomorrow!

Monthly Summary

Summary...I guess that's the right word. I keep wanting to use synopsis too, which I'm not so sure if it's as fitting.

• Grow closer to Christ - Again, it's hard to say as I'm going through my growth whether I'm actually growing or not, but youth group started up again this month, and it's been a wonderful experience. We've had more people than I ever remember before there, and things have changed a lot (for the better I believe).
  
• Win NaNoWriMo 2009 - I still have my inkling, though it's in no way set in stone yet. Waiting for November to come and scream at me a bit more.
  
• Edit my 2007 NaNo - I think it's coming along... NaNoEdMo starts in March, so I should have at least 50 hours with that. Surely that's enough to finish writing in those scenes and start line-editing?
  
• Edit my 2008 NaNo - Hoping to start on this one by about June. I'll start as soon as I finish my '07 NaNo for sure.
  
• Learn Italian to a conversational level - Going to do lesson 10/15 next week... Maybe I can finish sometime before the end of April? It's hard to say sometimes. And of course that's no guarantee that I'll be able to carry out a conversation with anyone.
  
• Learn at least one fancy musical piece for flute - Um...not picked out yet? Still?
  
• Get up early (6 or earlier) at least 60% of the time - I dunno about this one... I might have already missed too many days, and I've totally failed to keep track as well. I might just mark this one missed.
  
• Learn to drive (driver's ed, permit, restricted, license) - No change in this one, unfortunately.
  
• Get to the point on my flute that I'm capable of playing in church - And I need to practice my flute some. I've barely played it this month. Although when I did pick it up a bit ago I somehow magically had vibrato, which I never had managed before. Maybe the ocarina I got is helping me out (I have been playing that thing quite a bit).

So, my plans for March are mostly EdMo, maybe get another driving lesson, keep attending youth group and having daily quiet time, actually practice my flute, keep going on my Italian. Maybe things can settle into a bit of a routine. A good routine.

Editing Day...um...10 I guess?

I don't see the cold kitty today...but now there's snow on the ground.

I managed to meet yesterday's goal today (which became today's goal, since I can't seem to even write one stinking scene), and now I can send my characters merrily on their way with sidetrack averted. I even managed to have a character take note of a thing or two that I forgot to have taken note of in the first draft. I had a good enough day I guess.

I've also run through my Italian flash cards a few times, all really simple words so far. I started over when I finally got a friend to learn with me. Simple things I need to know like per favore and grazie and the like. I have to know to say please and thank you! And then there are the personal pronouns in the stack too. If I could just remember all of them. I know so many words in English, why can't I remember just a few extremely simple words in Italian?