About this blog

Hi there! My name is Viktoria, and I'm a native Russian speaker, dividing her time between Saint-Petersburg, Omsk and Moscow. I love many things, and writing is amongst them. Not only I love writing in Russian, I want to learn how to write fiction literature in English. Also I plan to move to New Zealand on August 15 (2013) so English will soon become my main language of interaction. Therefore, this blog.

I'll try to write daily a little something about moving to New Zealand, and also about writing. Feel free to tell me when I make mistakes. I mean it! :-)

Saturday 23 March 2013

Draft continues

This morning I felt good and dreamy. My good mood is in part a result of all the good things ahead of me, that I keep thinking about. I'll go to Moscow in three weeks to meet with my friends, and then two weeks after that me and my beloved friend will go to Kiev together for 5 days, and two weeks after that we'll meet again in Moscow and watch new Star Trek movie. I really hope all of this works out. It keeps me smiling for the last few days. Anyway, I felt good, and I used the mood to finally get back to my writing. :-)

Now my draft is 5209 words long or almost ten standard google docs pages. Again, it isn't much, but it is better than nothing. I am currently writing the chapter where Richard and James meet for the first time. It was really hard to start. I didn't know what any of them should say, but the thing is: they wouldn't know it either if they were real. That's why my clumsy writing seems appropriate to me. Richard is confused and he is afraid to screw up. So am I. But we are also both determined to get through to James, and I think, we are starting to succeed.

I'll use Richard's thoughts here:
"James seemed to be amused with all the geek references at this point. He probably thought his father was just a big baby. But at least they were having a conversation. And James was interested in getting to know him. That was a start."

These chapters are introductory ones. Main plot would take place after Tamara's death. And still, I feel that it wouldn't be right for me to go there until I draft the meeting properly. This is such an important period for both James and Richard, it determines their relationship in the future. Also, my guilty pleasure seems to be calling the boy Jimmy. I blame captain Kirk and his awesomeness. And Bones and his awesomeness.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

New words and new writing

Another week, another non-written part of my draft... my writing course started yesterday, and in a week a course in quantum mechanics starts. So now I have 5 of them simultaneously. I fight very mild panic attacks when I think about it, it feels like a huge pressure is applied to me by all these courses since I try to attend to all of them. This weekend I was supposed to finish the last programming assignment for my Algorithms course, but I procrastinated. And yesterday I felt so sick I didn't even go to work, and I didn't study either. :-(

But I did wrote first assignment for the writing class. It's an introduction essay. I think I did pretty good, and it's also delightful to see how many people are there in the course who are enthusiastic writers just like me.

I am a writer of my life

First time I felt like a writer was in elementary school. Our music teacher gave us a task to write a poem about feelings we had while listening to Vivaldi's "Seasons". I wrote a short poem about spring. That was my first. It felt amazing, it felt natural, and I liked it so much it never wear off to this day. I'm twenty six now.

I enjoy writing. It helps me to think, and it helps me to express myself in the most precise way possible since I'm not that good in talking or touching. Writing gives me freedom and strength to be who I am. Through the years I did all kinds of writing: school papers, university projects, technical documentation, love poems, fairy tales, letters, reviews, co-writing games, fanfiction... I also have a daily updating blog since 2003. Lately I became interested in writing in English. It's my second language, so I don't feel confident with it yet, and I take every opportunity to learn. English is beautiful, and I love it almost as much as I love Russian, though it is completely different in rhythm and in spirit. I believe that writing is to some degree independent of the language itself, though I am ready to be proved wrong.

Sometimes I feel that I not as much live my life, as I write a story of it, picking dialogs and laughing at irony, assessing my troubles for dramatic effect rather than full heartedly suffering through them. Whether this is healthy or not, I am forever grateful to have such gifts as a language and a written word.
***

New words for today:

discomfited
confounding
cumbersome
incredulity
infinitesimally
Wondrous

Thursday 14 March 2013

Also, the words


debilitation
to sweep
surreptitiously
hootenanny
mesmerizing

Oops?

Oh, wow, so I haven't written a thing for more than two weeks. That's me. I do this. Well, it's not like I didn't see it coming - that is why I am not gonna cry "I ruined all of it! It's a point of no return!", and instead I'll just update this blog, and then try to return to writing.

Below are not excuses (maybe, a little bit excuses), but factors that I think are in the way of my writing.
1) Sleep habits. I am still sleep deprived, though I sleep 8-9 hours a day, and I go to sleep around 2 or 3 a.m. even if I try to do it earlier. Which results in getting up around 11 and going to work late, and coming from work late, and that's a devil's circle. No time or energy to write in the morning.
2) Coursera. Lately I've been doing a lot of studing via coursera.org and science related podcasts. Mostly coursera. It takes a lot of my time and energy, and it isn't like I spend them to watch tv shows all day, so I feel it's justified. But it also means I have less time to write.
3) ...nope, that's it. If only I could normalize my sleep pattern and stop trying to do many things at once (not happenning), I would be able to create a rithual where I write a little every morning. At least, I think so now.

Of course, I spend time to tv shows and reading fanfiction, but that's my leisure time, I need it to function. I cannot be productive 24/7 all of a sudden, that's just not me, who's been a lazy ass since forever.

What good in all this? Is there any good? Yes! Yes, there is!
1) all my courses and podcasts are in English;
2) one of my current courses requires writing essays in English, so I am doing this - I do write in English, just in essay form;
3) I got myself into two different courses for writing in English. They'll start later, and I hope to learn a lot about language structure, about common stylistic errors and about construction of a story structure.

I am not a totally lost case. Which is why I am back (muahaha!). I won't start writing today or tomorrow, probably, I have a lot planned for this weekend (need to do last two weeks and final exam for one of the courses and few smaller things for other 2 courses), but I am back. And I will resume my writing. Next thing to write is James' first meeting with Richard.