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Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Writer's update: long time, no see

That moment when it's November and you realise you haven't blogged since August ... woops. I'm still alive, I swear! Well then, what the heck have I been doing? Yes, I've been asking myself this question quite a bit as well. And turns out, I've actually been up to a lot more than I realised.

Well first of all, I got a second job. Still at the university library, but a bit different to my job as a Student Rover. Throughout September, I was working 9-5 usually 2 or 3 days a week doing some writing and communications stuff for the head librarian. So that was pretty cool. I now have an access card to the staff only area and for a little while there I had a desk pretty close to all the offices of important library people. Then the head librarian was running out of time to give me stuff to do, so she got the service desk people to train me so that I can do all of that stuff too, so I've had a couple of shifts doing that in October. Now I'm finished with my second year of uni, so work at the library is a little slow. The Student Rover program won't run again until March next year, but in the meantime I'll still get the odd shift on the service desk during the summer teaching period.

But in between all that work in September and early October I was also still going to uni for eight hours on Mondays, meeting with the WORDLY production team on Wednesdays, and working on assignments. Well, actually, I kind of left all my assignments until the week before they were due, so in the space of one week I cranked out 3 essays ... and two of them were philosophy essays, so that made my thinker-box hurt quite a bit and I was filled with regret.

But before my assignments were all due, I was working both in the library and on the final edition of WORDLY for 2014 and I've got to say I am quite proud of what we produced for the Writers Club. We launched the final edition at the end of September and accompanied the launch with an open-mic spoken word event, and the Deakin Writers Club annual general meeting, where the new executive committee for the club and the magazine was elected. So, I am now production manager of WORDLY magazine and president of the Deakin Writers Club for 2015 and pretty excited about it. I have great faith in the rest of the executive team and I think we're going to work really well together to make 2015 an awesome year for all things writerly at Deakin.

So yeah, after all that and writing my assignments, I bummed around res for a couple of weeks while all my housemates suffered through exams (mwahahahahahaha suckers) and watched a lot of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra with various people because it's amazing. I went on a bit of a holiday with two of my best writerly friends, Watson and Holmes, and we did nerdy writerly things for a weekend and a bit. Then I got all of my marks back and I was pretty happy with them. It was a good trimester at uni, overall. Then I went back to my hometown for a little and managed to get my probationary drivers licence, drove back up to uni, and moved all my stuff off res because it was that time of year again. It was very sad saying goodbye to all of my housemates and other ressie friends, especially the ones I've known since my first year on res. It was sad saying goodbye to res in general, because it's been my home for two years now and such an amazing place. I'll miss it dearly, but the lease was over and it was time to move to another dwelling. I haven't moved far from the university, so I'll still be able to get in to go to work pretty easily.

And last of all, it's November! Which mean I've started NaNoWriMo again. This year, I'm taking the idea I used for my fiction piece in trimester 1 and turning it into a full-length novel. I don't think I'm doing a particularly fantastic job of it thus far, but hey, what are first drafts for if not for making an absolute mess of a great idea? But what happened to my project from last year, the one I blue-tacked all to my bedroom wall on res? Well, I had to take it down when I moved out, but I did finish the first round of edits a little while ago now. Last month, I finally started transferring those edits to the document on my computer. After NaNoWriMo this year, I'll be spending most of the summer editing that, along with the work of another friend which he gave to me back in September. I've been intending to write a story sins blog post about WALLS, but I guess that'll have to wait for a little while longer. For now, lets see if being on summer holidays can get me back into the swing of blogging.

Where have your writerly ventures taken you these past few months?
Bonnee.

10 comments:

  1. She lives! She liiiiiives!!!

    You've certainly packed a lot in there, Bonnee--way to go. I don't even know how to respond to all that except to say, "Congratulations", "Enjoy your summer", and "It's nice to see you back." As for me, I've been to the land of Rejection and made a trip to Down-but-not-out. Now I'm firmly established in a little place called Plugging Away.

    I hear that Korra has redeemed itself. My daughters told me season 2 was a train wreck (I watched season 1 and did not like it at all), but season 3 has been good.

    I'll be interested in seeing your 'story sins' post about WALLS. Sounds like you've learned a lot, which is always good. Be well!

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    1. I'm feeling exhausted just thinking about all that stuff! Thanks for visiting again, Jeff. The land of Rejection is one I'm probably going to be in starting early next year, but I'm glad to hear you haven't let you put it out of the game. What's Plugging Away? Is it online or is it a place? :) Linky links?

      Oh Legend of Korra has definitely redeemed itself, though I don't get why everyone was hating on season 2 so much. I mean, sure, it wasn't nearly as good as the first season, but it was still pretty damn interesting. Season three definitely took things up a notch again though, and season four seems to be going well too.

      Thanks for visiting, JeffO! :)

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    2. 'Plugging Away' as in 'Nose to the Grindstone', 'Shoulder to the Wheel', or, more simply, working on the next project. I have to remember that phrases like 'plugging away' do not necessarily mean the same thing in other places that they do here, if they're known at all.

      Regarding Korra--I liked some of the ideas behind the show (switching from rural to urban, a more advanced society, and definitely the us vs. them, bender vs. non-bender unrest), but I just could not get into the characters at all. I think I even gave the first two episodes of season 2 a try then said, "I still don't like these people--forget it!"

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    3. Oh no I understood the idiom, just the way you phrased it earlier and with the capital letters made it sound like it was the name of a blog or an online journal or something haha.

      The characters in Korra are a lot moodier and irrational than the characters from the original series. I have found myself yelling at the T.V. more often than usual, I will admit. But fair enough if you don't like them.

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  2. Yay, I'm so glad to see a post from you! Congratulations on a wonderful semester, and especially on your positions with WORDLY and the writers club. How awesome! I hope you have an awesome time with NaNo! :)

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    1. Thanks for visiting Shari. It was a pretty great semester with plenty of success. Are you participating in NaNo this year? :)

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  3. Best of luck with WORDLY and NaNoWriMo. My writing has been very sporadic, but I've been working on a lot of stuff for school, so the total words written (while still pitiful) are not much lower than my usual.

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    1. Love the way school work gets in the way. You should have seen me a few weeks ago, with one week before 3 essays I hadn't written were due--5,500 words plus research and referencing in a week, probably the most I'd written in one go all semester. Best of luck to you with school. Hope they're not working you too hard! Thanks for visiting :)

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  4. Oh, so nice, Bonnee to see you posting again. I'm always forgetting that you are in the world under with different times for summer and winter ... so congrats for finishing two years already. I'm impressed with all your activities which will fit well in your resume when you'll start looking for a job. Wow, one year to go in the university ... you are almost there. Best wishes with all your activities and in making your old and new novels as best as they can be.
    In other news I was visiting the website of an American Literary Agent and found out that she is also the agent of JeffO, so really congrats to him.

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    1. I'm pretty sure the majority of the world forgets that Australia and everyone south of the equator is in the opposite season. But hey, it means I'm in sunny paradise when everyone else is freezing. Uni is going way too fast, I don't want it to nearly be over already! And what a small world it is--I'm always pleasantly surprised when stuff like that happens. Thanks for visiting again, G.M. :)

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