Thursday 22 September 2011

Update on the Life of Me

Ha. Blog got forgotten. Oopsie.

Anyway, this is only a small update. I’ve actually been back from my adventuring for over a month now, but life since then has been a rather hectic mix of packing for university, cataloguing books, trips to hospital, funerals, and a new story.

I’ll write a longer post on my holiday, including some pictures, once this week’s over and I’m settled at university, because I need to go through the journal I wrote while I was away (ha, and actually find it) and sort out something that won’t be a terrible day-to-day monologue of all the amazing stuffs I was determined to never forget. It was amazing. And I know I meant to blog while I was away/when I got back, but eh. Better late than never? And besides, I only know of three people who actually read this blog and you guys will forgive me.

Anyway, on Saturday I go to university. Yayyyyyy . . . kinda. Every time I start to feel excited, I become that six-year-old who didn’t want to go camping because mum wouldn’t be there to make me a hot chocolate (‘milkies’) before bed.  It’s big and there’s still so much to do and I suck at making friends and my bike’s still broken and I’ve not found a church (not that I have a way of getting to one because of the bike) and I hate that almost all my books are going to be left at home in boxes. Right now, I feel I need to be at home. Not just because of being scared of leaving home, but because it's just a bad time to leave, I think. We need to be together, and I also don't want to be alone so far from home at the moment. It might not be the other side of the country or the world, but it's still far enough.

But anyway. I’m a wimp so this is probably all just stupid panicking and over-emotional-ness. It’s been a very bad week.

On a more happier front, it was my birthday a couple days ago. I got some cool orange headphones, a tin of rice pudding, £50 of book vouchers, a pretty notebook and a CD, and my aunt took me out for a pub meal. And my dad sent me a card, a facebook message, and an email, which is pleasantly surprising. :)

I also started a new story recently. In the first week I spent an hour brainstorming the spark of idea, and the rest writing, like non-stop. I reached the 12,000 word mark. That’s more than what I write during a NaNoWriMo week, so it kind of blew me away with excitement. I’ve never had an idea that got me writing so much and so fast. That was about three weeks ago, and since then I’ve slowed down a bit (verging on 20,000 now) to brainstorm more, so I don’t get stuck and burn out.

When I first started out, all I had was a scene and two characters. Now there’s a circus troupe, a brother, a pet elephant, a bratty fairy, and a host of magical items I’m having serious fun making up, as well as a half-worked plot that’s unravelling as I explore more characters. So all’s going well, and it feels amazing to be writing a children’s story again. I was afraid I couldn’t write them anymore after so many attempts at ‘grown-up’ stories that are still floating in the periphery of ‘to research/planandbrainstorm/actuallywrite’.

Poetry, as seems to always be the case whenever I get back into prose, has taken a liking to the cupboard of my mind to play shadow-butterflies on the door with a torch. It may be there a while if this story keeps going as well as it started, so this place (now I’ve remembered it) will probably be full of ramblings and holiday photos rather than the usual poetry-dumping.

Anyhoo, I’m done. Be back next week sometime to tell you about my first week in university and Berlin.

3 comments:

  1. Congrats on writing so much so fast! I love when that happens.

    Also, about going away to college: you sound like me. Even now--heading into my seventh week at UArts--I still don't like being so far from home. During the weeks it's not so bad, because I'm really busy and tired after dance, but weekends (such as now), I really wish I was close enough to go home.
    How far away from school are you?

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  2. Yeah, me too! It's very rare for me, so it makes me happy. Are you on anything new? You write so fast I can't keep track. xD

    I'm about 100 miles away from home, so not terribly far, but far enough for it to feel like too far. I can't go home much as travelling is quite expensive.

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  3. I'm writing a new novel, yeah. I didn't want to write something as long as a novel while in college, but go figure I had an idea a week before I left, so I've been working on that. Working title is "Hell's Imagined."

    I'm four hours from home. The worst is my school never has holidays, so I can't go home. Nothing off until Thanksgiving, anyway, and even then we only have two days plus the weekend. And I've been here for almost seven weeks now. I miss home, haha.

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