This week has been another enigma. It was both frustrating and interesting, depressing and exciting. I feel like a person of contradictions, which I’m pretty sure is true.
Anyhow, before I start writing more about the crazy emotions I have, let’s dive into this week’s episode of “The Word of Catherine Chen”.
NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month
I think I’ve tried “participating” in NaNo two years before this, but I barely wrote any words either time.
This year, I’m trying again, but I’m already falling behind. 
I need to write about 12.5K words a week if I want to make the 50K mark by November 30th, but so far I have barely over 5K done.
As for my “novel”, it’s currently just random scenes and pieces. I am working on my characters and plot, since I feel neither is fleshed out well.
The story is centered around four characters I invented a few years ago. Each of them is a little like me, and a little bit not.
Here’s a short sneak preview of one of my scenes:
I’m using Reedsy’s online book editor to write, and it’s been a great experience so far!
I would love to include more scene snippets in this post, but I’m saving them for 1) my story, and 2) future November 2020 weekly inspiration posts.
Japanese Poetry Contest
For my ENGL 271 class this week, my professor asked students to write a short, 4-8 line poem about “online learning in the age of COVID”. Enjoy mine below!
I brace myself against my desk,
Fingers flying over keyboard,
Eyes burning and squinting,
Staring tiredly at the endless screen.
I send off my homework,
Fall back onto my bed,
Screaming silently at the pain
For a career I never desired.
Pinguni UI Kit
I started working on a UI kit for Pinguni this week. I’m revamping the site (again, I know), but going back to good old Laravel this time. WordPress doesn’t quite give me the flexibility I want for the education backend (or frontend, to be honest), so I am going to take another shot at building it on my own.
Cons
Two things WordPress has that something I build could potentially lack are:
- easy SEO
- nice, clean content editing and categorizing
- plugins
I’ll be doing a lot of the above from scratch, but I think the flexibility is worth it. I am going to look at different Laravel packages for SEO and CMS-style things.
Will this choice be sustainable in the long term, though? We’ll have to see.
Earth Hour Microsite
For one of my Design 101 assignments this week, I created a microsite for Earth Hour.
Read more about the design process in my portfolio post!
Summary
My Week in Ten Words: Interesting. Tiring. Depressing. Going off to Texas! Crazy. Busy. What?
Question of the Week: Where is the right place for me?
November 1 – 6, 2020
