Bits and Bobs

[scfrankles]

It’s been ages since I did a journal post on either DW or LJ but I'm going to try and make the effort to post more regularly.

So, it was my birthday on the 6th, and I received some lovely fics from friends:

Three Little Maids by smallhobbit

A Year in a Life by mafief

First Birthday (An Inky Quill 221B) by stonepicnicking_okapi


And in July I took part in Flash Fiction Month on DA. I hadn’t really written for months beforehand, and I was starting to think perhaps that was it. My enthusiasm and the ability to come up with ideas seemed to have gone completely. But I’d also been watching a few writing events going past on DW that I usually took part in, and feeling a bit of a pang that I wasn’t involved. And FFM had been such an important event for me… In the end I decided to have a go and see what happened, without putting any terribly high expectations on myself.

You will be pleased/happy/horrified to know that the puns still live! I found I was able to come up with ideas for the prompts and challenges when I really set my mind to it. And I found I was still able to entertain others and entertain myself. As always I concentrated on humour but there were a couple of goes at psychological realism as well. I don’t expect anyone to wade through all 31 stories at this point but here’s a selection to give you an idea of what I got up to:

something serious (CW: contains (supernatural) bullying and one very strong swear word)

something humorous with puns

something humorous without puns

I didn’t win a prize but I did get an honourable mention for the month (there were four winners and four honourable mentions). Which I was very happy about because I hadn’t even been expecting that this time. It was just exhilarating to know I could still write and it was lovely to have people admiring my work and, well, admiring me. (I’m sure Small Hobbit will be pleased to know that my partner for the collaborative challenge described me as ‘hyper-competent’...)

But now the month and all the excitement is over, I rather feel I’m back to where I started. And I’m starting to wonder if I need to get out of a rut and stretch myself more as a writer. As a writer of silly comedy I do sometimes feel like a clever child being tolerated by the adults who are doing the real work. A DA friend whose writing I really admire was so enthusiastic about one of my stories 'The Flatmate' (the ‘something serious’ option above), which was by far the one which dealt the most with real human emotions. I think maybe I need to start concentrating more on what goes on inside my characters. It doesn’t mean I have to give up the comedy, just add to it.


The other thing that’s been going on is that I’ve been learning Dutch with Duolingo for the last six months. I’ve just ‘completed’ the course and received my virtual golden owl trophy. But I don’t really see this as the end—it just means I’ve now unlocked all the sections and so have access to them all. I’m planning on spending another six months on the course, earning all the crowns that are awarded for revising each section.

But I shall burble on more about my adventures in Dutch in the next post!

Comments

[scfrankles]

Well, if you formally want to take part in FFM, it runs every July, and you have to have an account on Deviantart and post there in order to share your stories with the other participants - and to be eligible for possibly winning one of the fabled FFM mugs ^__^

Here's the FAQ page for FFM.

But if you just want to have a go at the challenges and prompts outside of FFM - well, that's straightforward. You can find all of them here. That's 10 Julys' worth of prompts ^___^ You just need to click on the individual thumbnail links to be taken to the prompts for individual days - some days are just themes and prompts; others have more complicated challenges. There are 13 pages of thumbnail links but if you look on the lefthand side, there is a menu of links - all the links are tidied up into their respective years. (The first year, 2009, only appears in the menu - if you look back through the pages, they stop at 2010.)

If you want to know more about how DA and FFM works, I'm more than happy to go into further detail ^_-^

For me, basically I was just getting *bored* with myself, always doing similar things. That's rather how I feel. I have felt like this before, when I was only writing microfiction. And I had a go at writing longer things and found I could do it and enjoyed doing it. Like you, I think it's time to push myself again ^__^

I am nowhere near being fluent in Dutch but I'm greatly enjoying the skills I've developed so far ^__^ It feels so easy to learn a language now - there's so many resources available online. Things have changed so much since I was young.

I have a lot of favourite languages too ^___^ But I've promised myself I won't get distracted and will continue concentrating only on Dutch for the next six months at least. I've had a go at so many languages over the years and I've never got fluent in any of them before moving onto the next. I'm determined to reach at least a basic fluency in one language, and I'm very hopeful it's going to be Dutch ^__^

Just to be nosy... ^^ How many languages do you speak? And what are some of your other favourite languages? ^_^

[starfishstar]

Ooh, thank you – that's exactly the kind of info page I wanted but couldn't seem to find on my own. Thank you :-) I like prompts and challenges like that – in fact, I usually find that the more constraints there are, the more it inspires! Deadlines and having a community of folks also doing the same thing are also great motivators, so I've made myself a note to hopefully sign up for it next year.

Languages! My favorite topic… The only language I truly speak (aside from English) is German – but I'm very fluent, and worked for years as a translator. I moved to Germany back then in part because, like you're describing, I'd dabbled in so many languages, and wanted to finally speak one of them properly. I also spoke Thai when I was an exchange student, but have lost most of it, unfortunately. Other than that, I've just taken a semester or two of SO many languages here and there – enough to understand a bit but not say much.

Favorites! Oh, gosh, it's always shifting (and being added to)... Dutch has always been a favorite because it's such a wonderful mix of sounding almost like English, looking almost like German, but occasionally making sounds that surely only extraterrestrials could have come up with. Icelandic is a favorite just because I love Iceland so much (and the language wears its history so visibly, having changed so little from Old Norse). Burmese has always been my favorite for beautiful writing systems. Those are the favorites that pop into my head at the moment, but I’ve basically always got several going at once. :-)

[scfrankles]

Deadlines and having a community of folks also doing the same thing are also great motivators, so I've made myself a note to hopefully sign up for it next year.

I really hope you do ^__^ I've found it to be such a positive experience. It feels almost magical in a way - sometimes I wonder where the stories are coming from ^__^ And the community is a big part of the experience - you end up inspiring and supporting each other.

I'm so jealous that you have two languages - German as well as English ^___^ I did actually wonder for a while if you were German because you'd mentioned living in Germany.

Dutch has always been a favorite because it's such a wonderful mix of sounding almost like English, looking almost like German, but occasionally making sounds that surely only extraterrestrials could have come up with.

I do rather know what you mean ^___^ I am getting to grips with Dutch pronunciation, though I can't properly roll my r's ^^" I attempt a little front trill or a back gargle ^__^ Oddly the g has not presented any real problems, but it did take some practice.

Icelandic is a favorite just because I love Iceland so much (and the language wears its history so visibly, having changed so little from Old Norse). I think that's always a great reason for learning a language - having an emotional connection.

And I've had a look now at Burmese writing - it is so marvellously satisfying to look at ^^

[starfishstar]

Yeah, I did live in Germany for 8+ years (essentially my entire adult life, until I moved back to the US a few years ago!) So there's a bit of me that's a bit German...I'm actually visiting back to Berlin right now, and it's lovely to be here and have everything feel so familiar.

Icelandic! Yes, my connection to it is absolutely an emotional one, that's a good way to put it. I was back in Iceland on my way here to Germany, and though I haven't had any time to practice in the last year, I was relieved that I can at least still order at a bakery, and stumble my way through a supermarket interaction well enough that they *don't* switch into English. (Always a danger, because Reykjavík in summer is about 95% tourists, so Icelanders understandably default into speaking English at the slightest sign that you're not actually an Icelandic speaker.) And of course I bug my friends constantly to explain bits of meaning and pronunciation to me. ;-)

If you like Burmese, have a look at the Georgian alphabet! It's lovely, strange and very cool. Though I only ever learned a few phrases of Georgian when I was visiting a friend there, I did actually learn all the letters, so that I would be able to sound out signs. The letters are beautiful, and Georgian has a truly impressive array of consonants.