6 week Challenge update : running late

The 6 week challenge started very badly. My plan was to get at least 5 hours of Japanese a day which by now would be 35 hours, I'm at 10.5 hours. 

First I was on a trip, computer-less two days after the start of the challenge. Then I hurt myself while sleeping and ended up in the hospital and the pain tended to decrease my motivation about about everything I intended to do during the long golden week week-end.

But seriously, I don't know what's going on I can't seem to find the time to get anything done in Japanese and I even forgot my musical environment for the entire first week. How the hell is that even possible? I'm not sure. I mean winamp is playing on my computer and I forget to put my earphones on. That sounds like I'm purposely sabotaging myself and this has to stop. I think the fact that I was thinking the Read More Or Die challenge will be up at the same time isn't helping, I can't even read in the bus anyway as I'm not taking the bus anymore. I need to find a new way to get things done in Japanese. 

So I build up a new battle plan with part including me becoming a better person (so that's technically aimed to fail) but having a plan even a shaky one is better than nothing. 

1) Reading at least 10 pages of novel a day if possible before going to work.

Here are my weapons. ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖

                                   R.O.D

                                   星の王子さま

                                   魔女の宅急便 

 

2) Listening music at work (at the moment it's Angel heat playing in my ears)

3) Watching Bleach while eating diner at least (I can watch Dark Angel after I'm done with the challenge).

4) SRS repetitions during lunch break.

5) And of course the daily blog post on 日本語だけでいってみよ～ (which was forgotten yesterday so I might add more than one sometimes)

This should give me  few hours a day, I'm not sure I will be able to fully catch up the 25 hours I'm missing but I'll try not to miss more.

 Anyway, 頑張ります！！

ETSY product : Mini Viorel doll

You might have read the story of Viorel during the A-to-Z Challenge. You might even have had a look at the partial first draft of Vampire Heart.
Well now you can get yourself a Viorel doll.
The Viorel mini doll is a version of Viorel in Vampire heart with elegant had and clothes, something from the past.
It is suitable toe decorate your house, as a gift or to hang out of your bag. Just like the Sahel mini doll it
would never miss to attract attention. It will captivate every one around with his red eyes and enlighten your day with his somehow comical hat.
I wanted at first to make a more Demon Soul like version of Viorel but while working on this creation, I succumbed to the charm of the old fashion vampire in red and dark color. Looking at him will not miss to help me write the end of his epic travel story across Europe and Asia over more time than I would ever see in my life. 600 years of wandering might seem like a blessing or like a curse.
Get your on Mes crazy experiences ETSY shop. 

Demon Soul the making of part 5: Why is memory linked with the Soul ?

Everybody knows that memory is linked with the brain, we can't recall thing memorized at school if we don't put them in your head no matter the method, either copying or repeating or using a SRS. As they say in English "Do you know his phone number off the top of your head?" meaning that you know it so well that you don't need to think about it for too long to spit it out. 

There are also mnemotechnic to help people recall vocabulary, places, names, phone numbers and so on and so forth... which are tricks that you implement consciously to help yourself memorizing things. 

Other stories talk about people having the memories of their heart -or other organs- transplant donors see for example the Korean drama "Summer scent" or the story of Claire Sylvia. In French we say "learning by heart", meaning about the same as the English "off the top of your head" or "knowing by heart".

Recent research showed as well that memories can be found in the blood and in a lot of different body cells. (I don' remember where I read that.)  

The concept I used in Demon Soul was that the memories were attached to the Soul. The Soul being the carrier of emotions and personality is one of the representation of what makes a human being (or in the present case a demon). Our Soul is our spiritual energy. If we were to loose all our memories, our spiritual energy would somehow be reseted. So taking the opposite configuration, removing the Soul from someone's body would take away the memories. 

I used a second concept which is that once your Soul is torn away from your body, you don't instantaneously loose all your memories. As your Soul is still attached to your consciousness you are still able to recall who you are and what is your surrounding. But you start loosing your newly formed habits and relationships first. As the bounding becomes weaker and weaker however, as the Soul is tortured, the memories fade away more and more quickly with time. This process is the same as when loosing your memories from your past life. The Soul you are carrying and taking care of protect your current life from what happened to you before but in exchange, your body gives energy to your Soul and feed it with the experience and emotion drawn by your surrounding. 

Deprived of its Soul, the body becomes and empty shell. Deprived of the sensations given by the body, the Soul becomes pure spiritual energy waiting for another carrier.

So don't forget to take good care of your Soul.

Japan : 富山、宇奈月

En français
During Golden week, I went to 富山(Toyama)  for sight seeing. The first place we visited was 宇奈月(Unazuki). We used electric bicycle to go to the 温泉(hot spring). It was my first time using electric bicycle and it was really awesome. The acceleration was incredible, on the way back as it was going down I almost only have to let myself be carried down. The mountainous landscape was very beautiful around a lake with very blue and clear water. After the 温泉 we went back to the city center for diner and took another bath at the hotel.
Travel table of content

Old-fashioned writer

Sometimes I feel like I'm an old-fashioned writer. 

Other writers I know are using a lot of professional applications on tablets and pc when I'm just adding one words after another. I don't even know what those tools do or how to use them. Is it my Romantic/Romanesque style or just a way to avoid going into something which seems complicated?

I'm not too sure.

Once upon a time writers were able to write for monthly magazine and to add one chapter a month. They didn't have to go through months of editing processes of course there might have been typos and some inconsistencies but it still gave us some of the best books of all time. I'm not saying that editing is bad, I use a lot of it. But I think that sometimes a natural story coming strait out of the mind of it's creator has a lot more chance to describe something profound than something that has been revised by several people in months especially when there ideas dramatically differ. For example, I had always been told that I needed to add more characters in "Demon Soul", there is a place particularly crowded and I was asked to had more to make it great contrast with the quiet library where my main character spend a lot of time. Some readers wanted to know more about secondary characters so I developed them in the story giving them each backgrounds. I was told recently, for the first time, that I had too many character making the first chapters hard to read. I'm not sure how to go about it. I might try to have more 2 dimension characters and less 3 dimension characters in the sequels. I don't think I will reedit Demon Soul with the new point of view, it seems like going back to earlier version which were less appreciated. I believe that in the end, I have the last word anyway as the author.

Another reason why I think editing can be stealing something out of the story is that you evolve when you write a story and if you pause long enough you are not the same person anymore than you were when you started. All in all the characters change during revision and they might lose an indescribable flavor. If Jane Austin had edited Emma many times, I might not have ended up hating the character for the first half of the story only I might have hated here all the way. But liking her in the end made me like the novel. 

As you become a better writer with time I think it is important to understand that if your old stories don't seem as good as the new one,they  still represent where you were at when you wrote them and a lot of people are still there and probably enjoy them a lot. 

I find the description of Paris in Notre-Dame de Paris absolutely atrocious but I still read through it and enjoyed the rest of the novel. I'm probably not the only one who got frustrated with the fish catalog in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Stay true to your story !

Demon Soul the making of part 4 : Why do demons' wings change color?

In the last part of the Making of,  I introduced the surprise characters, now I want to introduce more specific details about the characters and their special characteristics. I will be discussion particularities about demons especially as Demon Soul is obviously a story about demons.

If you have already seen the post about Watchers, Nephilim and Hunters for the A-to-Z Challenge, you know by now that in the world I created, the demons are all descendant of angels having lost their glorious white wings but this doesn't meant that demons don't have wings. They have wings looking more like bat wings where you can see the articulations and bones as the wings are now deprived of their white feathers. The wings of the demons are at the top of their back, somewhere on the scapula bones. Just at the junction between the wings and the rest of the body we can find one of the demons' nervous system center. This part of their body is extremely sensitive and one of the highest punishment is to have your wings cut their, obviously without anesthesia, this is the same for the angels. But because this nervous system is at equal distance between the heart and the brain, the blood flow and nerves carry the thoughts and emotions of the demon allowing there wings to change color.

Human being are known to blush is different situation. The demons' wings changing color is about the same principle. However, as demons are able to do magick following the four elements, water, fire, air, and earth, their wings have a broader range of color than a human face. The darker the color the stronger the emotion is. For example having light blue wings mean that the demon is at peace and calm, if the wings turn dark blue, the demon is becoming happier and getting excited. The color for happiness is pink but most of the time it always occurs in flashes.

Get "Demon Soul" here or on amazon

6 Week Challenge starts again.

Yesterday was the end of April and with it, the end of the A-to-Z Challenge and of Camp NaNoWriMo. But today is the start of May and it also means that it's the start of the 6 Week Challenge once again. So for the next 6 weeks I will be highly involved into immersing myself as much as I can in Japanese and in avoiding English as much as possible. To register it's really easy, all you need to do is have a twitter account and to use the appropriate tags as described in the 6 Week Challenge page here. 

In this challenge, I decided to keep on with the reading which this time will be a lot about reading novels instead of mangas, keep on watching drama and animation, especially finish the Bleach series and I will add a daily blog post in Japanese on my Japanese blog, 日本語だけでいってみよ～. My main problem with the 6 Week Challenge is that it lasts 6 weeks, so there is no rest for me or resetting to something else at the end of the month. Last time I noticed that I ended up slacking of quit a bit toward the end. This time I want to keep my motivation as high as possible through all of it so I will have to invent tricks to help myself. I'll let you know how it goes. Last time, I managed 194h39 of Japanese in total. That's an average of about 4.6 hours a day. This time I want to try to reach 210 hours. That's not a lot more so it should be doable. 頑張ります！