NebulaDreams

www.fanfiction.net/s/12658897/…

Alright, so 2018 was a busy year for me in quite a few ways, not only for Uni, but also for stuff on the side as well, and seeing how it's New Year's Eve, I thought I'd gather my thoughts on how this year has gone by and what my plans are for the next.

So, Uni, huh? I've mentioned it in passing, but I don't think I've talked about it in much detail. Last year, during the first semester for the study period, I enrolled in the ERASMUS+ scheme, which gave me the opportunity to study abroad for a semester, and of all things, Finland was on the list. Although I was curious, I wasn't sure if I was going to fully go into or not, and so I pretty much applied at the last minute, but ended up getting a place in the scheme after all. So I was pretty excited to go, since I thought it would be nice to study somewhere different, and in particular, visit somewhere a lot icier than what I'm used to. I went into it blindly with no foreknowledge of how to speak Finnish aside from a few phrase, as 'Puhutekko englantia?' comes to mind, so I didn't know what to expect. I had a tutor there on the other side who agreed to meet me at the airport and take me to my accommodation as well, so that saved me the hassle of getting a taxi.

As you can imagine, with someone quite sheltered immigrating to another country, I wasn't fully prepared at first, so it was tough getting used to the public transport system as well as the feeling of being an outsider of someone else's culture. For the first few weeks, outside my class, I barely left my room, I was that boxed in. Mentally, I wasn't all that well, and in hindsight, taking a 5 month trip to another country didn't exactly help, so I was flirting with antidepressants at the time. Thankfully, I adjusted, with the help of a few classmates I met along the way, and going on trips organised by the student union and the exchange team helped me make a few friends that lasted throughout all of the semester. I think the toughest part of that whole thing was the feeling of being alone, without anyone from your homeland to help you, and that made me realise how important it was to actually get out there and socialise. In an introverted country such as Finland, especially during the winter times when there are only 4 hours of daylight, the atmosphere could get pretty oppressive.

One thing that softened the blow was that the language barrier wasn't as strong as I anticipated. There was still the element of being an outsider who could only speak English in a non-native country, but as it turned out, many Finns are proficient in English, and I didn't have much trouble speaking in my native tongue whenever it was necessary. I tried to hide it however, but I occasionally let my English side slip in certain situations, such as going to the supermarket and not understanding certain requests at the time, such as 'Kuitti?' (receipt), so it could get embarrassing at times.

On the whole, it was a great experience for me, as it encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and helped me break out of my shell a bit. Sounds cliche, I know. To be honest, I am still a guarded person. I don't tend to reveal much about myself to others close to me and am careful with my words and how I approach social situations, which I can attribute to my general awkwardness and my experience with high school drama. It doesn't take a trip to another country to fix something that deeply embedded into my psyche. It did, however, give me memories I'll take with me to the end of my days. I wrote about my experiences during one of my trips below:

  Travelogue - Helsinki, Stockholm and MariehamnHelsinki
So began our tour from Turku to Helsinki, Stockholm, to Mariehamn and back to Turku again. First I had to get up early before 7 so I could catch the bus to the city centre, and then waited for the Onnibus to Helsinki. Once I got on there, it was an hour and a half of riding until I got to Helsinki. From then on, me and my friend tried to cram all we could before we had to get on the ferry to Stockholm, which wouldn’t be for another 6 hours. As you can imagine, condensing the experience of such a big city into such little time is a herculean task, but we managed to make a fairly decent day out of it.

We visited some of the shopping centres there as well as a few of the cathedrals, which has some of the most gorgeous architecture I’ve ever seen in a building. We also visited the free museum, which is worth going to at least once even though it’s short. One highlight was the Clubbing exhibition, although time will tell i

There were some major breakthroughs in my creative lifestyle during that time, however, and this was a fantastic year for my writing in general. I started writing fanfiction in the previous year after many failed projects, and wrote the first two chapters of The Curious and the Shiny during that time when I was back in my home country. During my stay in Finland, however, that was when I finally started fleshing out my work, finishing the next 6 chapters and releasing them from April to May after a few beta reads from others. Looking back on it after rebooting the fanfic with a revised version, although I could've done things differently, especially in the opening, the reactions I got from the story as well as interaction in the Serebii Discord server empowered me to continue writing, and that persevered throughout the whole year.

Art helped me during those times when I found it hard to adjust, even though I wasn't getting much further in improving it, only through mileage. Bizarrely enough, it proved to be essential for me to pass the semester, as one of the elective courses was a Project Cafe where you could pretty much do anything you wanted as long as you could record the amount of hours you put into your work. I failed the Radio Project before, which was worth 5 study credits, so I was 3 behind from getting the required 30 to pass, so my project was a series of Reddit Gets Drawn portraits that involved digitally painting photo studies, culminating in a total of 81 hours spent (and yes, I counted!). I produced some of my best work through that, but it also got tiresome and tedious after a while, since I used the same processes throughout most of the project, so it felt like a chore more than a creative hobby. Then again, I guess art has to feel like a chore sometimes if you want to actually improve.

So after all that was said and done, I moved back to my home country and felt pressured to do work as soon as I got back. My friends were out getting jobs, so I thought getting a job would benefit me too, even though I was lucky to be in a position where that was necessary, to the point even my parents suggested there would be no point. I landed an interview at a retail store, however, and worked there for a grand total of one month. It was a bit of a mistake on my part, since there were a lot of other things I wanted to do during my stay back in the UK, such as join writer's groups and get involved with conventions, which the shifts got in the way of. It got stressful for me after a while, so I eventually quit, and it was for the better really, although there were still parts of that job I liked, so it wasn't all bad. It just wasn't right for me at the time.

In the holidays, I joined a circle of writers which gave me a platform to share my work, and met a few published authors at a few events as well. Not only that, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo as well, writing 30k words worth of material for The Curious and the Shiny, which eventually resulted in chapters 9-18 being released.

So everything went swimmingly all the way through the remaining time off, but I eventually went back to Uni for my third and final year and completed the winter semester. It was a stressful time for me in some ways, as I was anxious about the career path I would take in journalism, my lack of work to contribute to a portfolio, and also a hectic semester in general when it seemed like I wouldn't be able to complete one assignment at the last minute, but it all fell into place eventually, and my prospects for the future seem more hopeful.

I did a lot more with extra-curricular stuff as well. I published an article and a short story in the student newspaper, with more awaiting submission to other places, and got a lot of mileage with my fanfiction in general. I wrote the entirety of the first draft of Black Paint in a week while I was back in my shabby living conditions in an outhouse, and I won this year's NaNoWriMo, writing 40k for The Curious and the Shiny and another 10k on a side project, as well as rewriting the first chapters of TCATS. Even after a few roadbumps on the way, including having to change the ending to Black Paint after some deserved backlash towards the ending, it was perhaps the best period of writing for me in an already fruitful year.

Black Paint Chapter 1
Shadows around the room blanketed the girl. The oppressive stench of iron floated all around her, belonging to the bodies of her family. Her heart beat in her throat. She could hear her own ragged breaths against the grunting presence in the room, and the only thing she could see was the presence’s jade eyes, gleaming like jewels in a black ocean. It leered above her, looking down at her as if she was only a bug beneath its foot. It inched closer to her. Closer and closer still. When she gazed into its thin pupils, she could feel herself falling into its blackened voids. Tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks.
“P-p-please!” she said, in between bouts of sobbing, “Don’t d-d-do this! I won’t mention this to anyone, j-j-just stop already!”
The presence only moved closer, to the point the girl could feel its hot breath licking at her face. She closed her eyes.
“No. Please go away. Just go. Just   The Curious and the Shiny Chapter 1-1 (Revised)
The sunlit gravel burned all that walked across it, yet the Luxray dashed through. Even as his paws blistered from the bare dirt and his wounds burned with the intense heat in the air, he had to. His sensitive ear picked up the footsteps of his pursuers, chasing from behind.
He ran towards the cityscapes ahead of him, where humans awaited, along with the promise of relief from his injuries, and afterwards, a normal life. Behind, though, was them. He didn’t want to imagine what they had in store for him if they caught him.
The more he ran, the more he wheezed with exhaustion, and by the time he reached the junction where the roads from the other cities converged, he stopped to catch his breath. Cars, vehicles, trucks, all honked in cacophony. And in them, humans. He ran alongside the asphalt, shouting to anyone that might’ve listened as he ran. Surely, one person must’ve seen his condition and stopped to help, but nobody did. T   Deli's Delivery Service: Extended Cut
The last thing on Deli the Delibird’s mind was to break out of the comfort of his trainer’s bedroom, especially when it approached Yuletide, of all things.
It had everything he needed and more: a pellet dispenser to feed himself twice throughout the day, a water cooler he and his trainer Perry shared, a bed of his own he was slightly too big for, and the company of Perry himself, at his side to play video games with, even if his lack of hands didn’t give him much control over the gamepad. Nevertheless, the two spent each day in that room, interrupted every so often by Perry’s mother who’d come in with his dinner, increasingly annoyed with each passing day. Deli wouldn’t have it any other way. Or so he thought.
And so, that special day started like any other. Deli huddled next to Perry, sharing the same blanket as he watched him play on the handheld gaming device Deli could never remember the name of, as he fa

So, where to go from here? The next year, I'll be continuing to put out chapters of TCATS, but more importantly, I'll be studying for my dissertation next semester, which involves a Freelance and Employability Portfolio in journalism, as well as 10k words worth of material in creative (original) writing. I expect it will be daunting, but it will be important for me to nail this year if I have a hope of getting a career in writing. Of course, things might not pan out the way I'll expect them to, but I hope it will give me the skills needed to make a start. I might branch out into radio or more news writing, or do something completely different. Who knows?

My art might take a backseat from here on out, as I don't see it as a main priority at the moment, and am dissatisfied with the direction it's taken lately. I would still like to pursue it, as my family are adamant to get me to continue producing artwork, so it might just be a matter of post-semester burnout, but it will take some careful scheduling for me to continue my art studies, as that's one area I really neglected in the last quarter of this year.

But anyway, thank you all for supporting me throughout the year, and I wish you a happy new year, in whatever way you plan to celebrate it.