I finally got back to writing 1,000 words every day in my WIP* on Sunday 7th September, after easing back into it with 500 two days before that. So that's good. It means I passed 50,000 words this week (woo!) and am now at 53,049. Which is 114 A4 pages according to LibreOffice, and 212 book-pages according to my dodgy calculations.
Oh, by the way, since my MS Word trial is about to run out, I downloaded LibreOffice. It's completely free and I haven't noticed any important differences between it and MS Word yet. Plus, I was able to 'Open' the WIP into LibreOffice and start working immediately (which was great because it saved me the 10 seconds copying and pasting 40,000+ words would have taken). So I highly recommend it.
I did a detailed outline for the first half of the WIP (or about 45,000 words of it). So now I'm on shaky ground because I'm running without plotting everything meticulously. Fortunately, it's going well. I do have a broad outline for what's to happen which is a lot more than I had in last summer's novel-thing (that I have since ditched).
Speaking of writing, my friend Jerry (who I mentioned in my CTYI post ) has started a blog where he's pledged to write one haiku a day for the next 365 days. I suggested this, so hopefully he'll keep going. Give him some love for me, or write a comment on his blog suggesting a haiku-worthy topic.
In yet more writing 'news', I submitted an article pitch to the Listverse forum yesterday. I got pretty caught up in school and haven't written one in about three weeks, so I need to get a move on if I want to pay for CTYI next year. Apparently it'll be checked tomorrow so ... fingers crossed it gets greenlit.
On a related note, do you ever realise just how much content there is on the internet? I can sit there brainstorming ideas for ages and find that 90% of the time someone's already written an article on that topic. Frustrating, but kind of amazing at the same time.
My non-internet social life is effectively dead right now, thanks to Fifth Year and general commitments. I never anticipated how stressful 5th Year would be (That's ... Grade 11, I think, for the Americans), but its a huge level up from Junior Cert (and TY was a totally different kind of stress). The teachers just load us with homework and I already had stuff to study/catch up on in the second weekend.
I picked up Physics after practically all the science teachers came after me and told me I should, which meant I had to drop Biology in school and am now doing it outside so I have all three sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Physics). Bit stressful, but what isn't lately?
As if I didn't already have enough on my plate (I think I've mentioned before that I find it very difficult to say no to opportunities), I joined the Student Council this year, became the Choir Journal writer, joined Chess and will join the Ukulele Orchestra hopefully next week (I always bring my ukulele in on the wrong day and then have to cart it around. At least it's light.) That's adding to all the stuff I mentioned in my first post. Chess is going okay though. I finally got over my paralyzing fear of losing and have won all (two) games I've played so far. I'm being put against someone who's certain to beat me next, but whatevs, be grand.
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| Me playing my ukulele. I'll get a better picture at some point. |
I'm still going well with Duolingo (currently on, I think, a 13-day streak, and haven't missed more than one day in a row since I started). When I started it in late August it said I could read around 29% of all French text, and today it told me I could read 63%. So it's working. (Phew, because I find French boring in school.) I need to get onto Codecademy and Vocabulary.com, actually.
I went to the lab in Trinity yesterday to work on my project. It went well, though I won't go into detail because there's not really any point. Just glad, because I'm feeling a bit under pressure now. Need to download the application form this weekend.
Recently discovered I love Kelly Clarkson's music, particularly 'Because of You", "Since U Been Gone" and "You Found Me". And I'm probably missing some. Also, Pentatonix are the absolute best. I've been listening to their covers of "Somebody that I Used to Know" and "Say Something" a lot while writing lately. I so regret not going to their concert with my school choir last year, but I couldn't afford it. Working to recify that.
Plans for today? Very little. Can't see boyfriend due to the fact that he lives across the country, and Dad's not keen on my paying for a train again today since I was up in Dublin just yesterday. Might be seeing Jerry tomorrow if things go right.
There you go: my recap of September so far.
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