Huh, It's Late December...

It's that time of limbo where the Christmas rush is suddenly over, you're still on winter vacation, it's not the New Year yet, but you feel like you're about ready to leave the current one behind. Or maybe not. I wind up considering by New Year's goals and figuring out what I want to do next year.

Of course surviving college is on that list, since I'm taking 19 credit hour next semester and then transferring to a four-year university in the fall, and that goal is probably going to stay on the list until I'm out of college, in which case it'll probably be changed to finding/keeping a job or something.

I've got a few Italian goals, little things to count as milestones: finishing up my current Italian course, achieving a B2 level of fluency, finishing the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Italian, writing a short story in Italian (that last I feel would signal to myself that I have a reasonable mastery of the language that I can construct a thousand words or so of comprehensible script, which in my opinion is an accomplishment). I'd like to start a new language as well, maybe Swahili or something, but those Italian goals come first.

Also linguistically related, I'm sort of putting my created language, Ganyi, on hold. It doesn't appear I'll have too much time to devote to it, and I didn't even complete my goal for it this year (yes, I technically have a few days left to work on it, but I have plenty of other things to do at this point as well, like catching up on my Italian work). So for now it gets the goal of adding at least 100 words to the language and we'll just sort of go for a slow but steady pace of improving the vocabulary, which is largely what it needs at this point. I can't just randomly assign words though, I want to have my etymologies straight and common roots and all of that jazz, so it's not as simple as just any little algorithm to work it out.

Piano playing makes the list, in the spirit that I don't want to drop it. I want to improve my jazz and blues playing skills (I'm not adding a great quantifier to that, no, but as my jazz and blues skills are currently non-existent, I'll know when they're actually there, and that means they've improved. I'd also like to work up at least ten pieces to, well, I guess performance level, even though I don't expect to perform them. Maybe offertory or something at church.

What else... I would like to blog somewhat regularly, maybe weekly with a few excepted weeks. Maybe I'll shoot for twice monthly. Also a little fitness goal, and something fun like memorizing "Fox in Socks," and then something NaNoWriMo-esque: I want to participate in either one of the Camp NaNoWriMos (I'm thinking June) or else the original flavor of NaNoWriMo, in November. It is not on my list to do both a Camp NaNo and the regular one, since I doubt I'll want to try a NaNo challenge in November when I'm away from home. August is when school starts and I'll be moving and such then, so I'm thinking ideally we'll go for June, when school is out but there's not usually a whole lot else.


So that's about my plan for the next year. We'll see how it holds up under stress. It's not that I care much about planning the whole thing out, but the lists I make up are sort of reminders of things I'd like to accomplish, things I want to perpetuate, an organizing exercise, of sorts. So, yeah. I'm off to enjoy my time of limbo!

Hardest. NaNo. Ever.

In which I finally get around to updating my blog again. Anyway, since we've last left off, I finished Camp NaNoWriMo the 2nd (did I mention I did two of those? I don't remember anymore), headed off to college, and managed to win another November rendition of NaNoWriMo.

Summer is Fleeting...

So school starts in just over a week, and do you know what I did Monday? I started a new Italian course. Brilliant of me. Oh well, it's one I've heard great things about, Assimil, so we'll see how I like it. The first few lessons are pretty easy, as the book is for beginners and "false" beginners, but they do seem pretty in depth, and for now I'm going over them for any vocabulary I may have missed and to get used to the style of teaching, so on and so forth.

Camp NaNoWriMo is going on again this month, and I'm still writing, but I should be done by school starts, if I can just finish up the story. I have just over a week to get to the point (which I only figured out a few days ago) and resolve it. Woo hoo! I should really be spending a few hundred more words each day to build buffer and move the plot along. I tend to have a bit of an aversion of moving the plot much until I have my words for the day. Odd, huh? Oh well, back to work! Writing and/or Italian!

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!