O-Week on Residence/Writer's Update

So for those of you who didn't know, I moved in to my room on campus at my university on Sunday, and I am seriously thrilled to be a Deakin student right now. I'm sharing a house with nine other people from a range of different courses and origins, including a girl from Britain and an exchange student from Sweden. Majority of the people in my unit are girls and I have had people in my room till 11:30 for the past two nights, just socializing rather than hitting the clubs; as much as some of us like drinking, I'm not the only one who would rather do it in a relaxed environment at home. Fun fact about Australia: legal drinking age is eighteen.

As well as meeting a lot of new people, there are a few other ressies here who I already knew from high school. On top of that, I've met quite a few people who will be studying Professional and Creative Writing with me. I've also already taken the opportunity to join the Deakin Writer's club, who publish a small newspaper/newsletter containing member's written works on a ... I'm not sure if it's a weekly or monthly basis, but you get what I mean :)

In other news, I've done a huge redraft of the first five chapters of KATHERINE, which I'm really happy about. I feel like everything already sounds much better now that I'm not trying to avoid a maximum word-count of 20,000. In hindsight, the story was too complicated to be kept to the novella competitions required length. I've shot the word-count up to nearly 28,000 again (after re-adding the deleted scenes) and it's still rising. I feel much better about this project now.

Last of all, I randomly thought I'd write a piece of flash fiction. I had the line 'the night is for hunting' stuck in my head. This is the title of the 6th book in John Marsden's Tomorrow series (I'm only up to the 4th book, I think.) So I used the title as a prompt.

The night was for hunting. We wandered through the shadows, our eyes peeled. Mira had her crossbow loaded and at the ready, waiting for Arthur to point out a stray animal; an unfortunate creature that would live no more than a few seconds longer. I lingered at the back of the trio, ensuring that we would not become the hunted. The forests were alive with the howls of wolves whenever the moon was visible. We could kill them if we saw them in time. But if we couldn’t…

“There,” Arthur whispered. Mira aimed and fired. A creature met its end. 

Your turn! Write a piece of flash-fiction, no more than 150 words (mine was exactly 100) based on the prompt 'the night is for hunting'. You may use the prompt in the piece and change the tense to suit yourself. Leave your little creations in the comments below. I'll put them in the next blog post and everyone can vote for their favourite. You cannot vote for your own. The winner gets the choice of: a guest post on my blog; a guest post from me on their blog; an interview (interrogation) which can go on either or both blogs; or to send the first page of their WIP in for a critique on my blog.  So get writing!

How are you all?

- Bonnee.