Live! From the new house

We are in!!! It was a long week, but we're finally in and for the most part unpacked, and barring a few mishaps along the way (such as a runaway kitty who has since come home again) it all went a lot smoother than I had imagined it would.
There were no emotional breakdowns on my part, no frayed tempers, no arguments, and Ivy was the most wonderful girl on moving day, she did so well! I am so proud of how well she handled it all. And we love the new house (Well, I am free to love it now that my Mojo boy is back, until he came home it seemed like too big a cost to have to pay to be here). We're not nearly as cramped as we thought we'd be, we're all a lot warmer despite the fact we've not even lit the fire or used a heater since we got here. So I expect us to be healthier here than we ever were at the old house, sickness will be easier to keep at bay.
I'm looking forward to this afternoon when it's just me in the house, well, and the animals too. I'm going to move some things around, put some paintings up, and just chill out, maybe sort out the spare room a little more though I can't shift my desk in here by myself. I cannot wait to have that space organised!! My own little corner of the house, the place where my laptop will dwell and my writing will be done (for the most part).
Speaking of writing: despite this cold and my achey body, I feel motivated. There are several challenges coming up and one on right now which I have committed myself to giving my best shot at. So let's take a look at those.

Currently the SoCNoC 7 Day Prep Challenge is underway. I have yet to start, and have absolutely no idea what I will end up writing, but I thought I'd take it anyways and see where it led me - there are several partial ideas, snippets of images and potential characters lurking around in my mind so we'll see where it takes me.

Following on from this, naturally, is SoCNoC itself!! WOOHOOO!!! This will be the second annual occurrance of this event and I am looking forward to it - despite not knowing what I'll end up writing. I loved the community support and fun that we had last year on the site and through the chat room, and found that word wars are my friend, and even writing down ten words at a time is better than writing nothing at all. Last year I reworked a very old story I had written as a 13 year old and lost somewhere along the way, the story grew phenomenally and is onto it's second book now and so far removed from the original - very exciting. I have another story I could do the same with, and that would be interesting, but at the same time I wanted to veer away from fantasy for this novel and see what else I can do. We'll see, we shall. Not long now til it all kicks off!!! Go Team Kiwi!!

And finally, something to line up for after SoCNoC is the Rejection Collecting Challenge. Now, I haven't submitted many things, and like most people am not fond of the idea of rejection, but looking at this challenge makes me want it. lol strange hey? But it's about getting your work out there, getting the guts up to just submit and stop worrying about everything. I'm going to have to work on getting enough stuff together to submit, but that's part of the fun of the challenge. I don't have 25 stories/poems I could send in anywhere, so I guess I'll have to go hard earlier on in the challenge and hope to get some rejections in early so that I can resubmit some of the same stories to different places. This motivates me to get sorted, get working on sending my stuff out and seeing where things go, so thank you pterodaustrodreams for posting the challenge.

March is nearly here!

And it is going to have to be a big one - I signed up for NaNoEdMo a couple days ago which requires 50 hours of editing on your novel. It's a pretty big number, but I am well aware that I really need to get to work and get this done and am hoping that this will help to spur me on in a mad dash towards completion come the end of March.
Aside from this, I also, much earlier, had signed up for the March Fantasy Madness challenge over at Kiwiwriters. And I want to do that as well - we'll see how this pans out. My original plan was to have all my editing done by now, but the reality is that the wedding, pre and post, took up a lot more of my time and resoures than I ever imagined that it would. I've been quite sick, tired, trying to re-energize, but finding it hard to focus in on what needs to be done with the writing side of my life.
The editing was meant to be done. I was going to do that 10k in the first two weeks of March to kick start me back into the WIP, and all was going to be well, I was hoping to have the first draft finished by the end of March so that I could get into Script Frenzy come April.
It would have to be a hugely productive month in order for both the editing of one novel and the first draft of another to be complete.
So we'll see how it goes... lol, there is very little else going on in my life right now so it should be fine. But then, it's easy to say that now, and very easy for things to come up which get in the way - must focus, must try my best, and get myself back on track. If it comes to it I will once again flag Script Frenzy, though I was sad to miss out on it last year and feel ready to write the script that I have been wanting to since I did a paper on script writing, I wasn't brave enough to make it an assignment though because I wasn't sure I could pull it off well enough to get a good grade. It needs to be written though, if not this year, then next I guess.

and time flies by

So quickly indeed.
This might have to be another new beginning I think!
This year is full on. I survived the christmas season, I passed all of my exams and I won NaNoWrimo, which led me to sign up at kiwiwriters.org It's a good site, with a lot of helpful people on it and I really hope that over time it will grow and grow.
Writing - as i have been told by many lecturers - is something that people do both alone and as part of a community, because if there was no one reading, commenting, encouraging or desiring to read then in some ways there is little point in writing in the first place.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, I'd like to think that I would still write even if no one had any desire to read my ramblings. In fact, a lot of my writing has never been read by anyone else and that never stopped me from writing it down so far.
I do however believe that being part of some kind of community can help you grow, exposure to different styles and ideas and techniques rarely hurts you, generally it seems to compel and often challenges you to grow as a writer - or whatever other endeavour your attempting.
So far its certainly been challenging me. When I think I can't be bothered to write anything a challenge will crop up and I'll say to myself 'Hey, now that could be fun, if nothing else lets do it for a laugh' and generally ideas just start to flow from there. It is a good thing indeed.

This year is the last of my degree - providing that I pass everything, and it will be the first year in a long time that I haven't taken any papers involving writing. In fact every paper I am taking this year is Psychology. I fear already that I won't get to read anything for pleasure - last year was bad enough and this year is more full on for sure. I got a couple books from a bookstore, promising myself that indeed, by the end of this university year they will have been read and I can only hope that I do manage to stick to my guns on that!
Reading helps my writing, and in some ways I feel almost like I am starving myself by not being able to find the time to read something for pleasure. Which would suggest I'd find the time to read more right? lol We'll see.
So, on top of the study I still have my dear little girl to look after. She's just turned two and is always happiest when she has my full attention - which makes doing anything else difficult at times. Shes happy to let me do my thing in ten minute brackets but anything longer than that and she starts to ask me all kinda of questions and tries to get me to play at any number of different games - very tempting at times.
This year hopefully I'll be able to find a better balance between study and non study time, and hopefully make more time for writing. NaNo really put the bug back in me and I have many ideas which are just waiting to pour forth.
The last big task of the year is to plan our wedding. The big things are out of the way but I think the smaller details are always the ones that seem most difficult to decide on and pin down with certainty. I'm so excited for the future. So many plans, so many hopes, and so many things on that good old to-do list.
Maybe one of these days I'll be brave enough to phsyically write it down, it would mean I'm more accountable for successes and failures. While they are just notching up in my head it's not so big of a deal if something passes by without being achieved.