Languages

I finished the first draft of a children book I'm writing. I'm now busy typing it from longhand onto digital file.

My typing speed is deplorable compared to my longhand, my longhand skill is as bad as my typing. I'm going at a crawl having to figure out what I wrote, fix the errors within and do a bit of rewriting at the same time.

I've always found editing to be boring I much prefer creating and fantasizing new stories. Writing a new story flows more easier and faster than correcting and fixing it. One day in the future, I hope a near one, I will improve my writing in such a way that I need less fixing. It would be a great day however that day isn't today.

I'm now struggling and crawling at it, thank God it is just about 15k words that I need typed and corrected and I'm midways. After finishing I will do another round of correcting.

The children story is written in Dutch. My wife having excellent dutch grammar and spelling will churn out the last mistakes. I'm very optimistic she will do so because she is great and smart, she can do everything, even fixing all my horrendous errors and bad writing. (I'm sucking up to my wife so she does the work, please don't tell her.)

English is not my native language, still my grammar and spelling is much better than my Dutch. I've noticed the way I write Dutch sometimes it is a direct translation from English. It makes it a bit more difficult for me to write and it's weird.

In my daily life I talk more Dutch than English, though I write and read more English than Dutch. From time to time I also talk, read and listen in many other languages. I am afraid that because of the multitude of languages I was/am exposed to, that I've lost having a native tongue. (or I just suck at all languages)

I used to think in just one language, though a few years ago I noticed I stop doing that. When writing I now think in English, when at work I think in Dutch, when at home it's a mix of a plethora of languages but mainly Dutch, sometimes for odd reasons I even exclaim some French. My French skill being the worst, I've gotten many a mean look the few times I tried talk to a Parisian. It's a beautiful language but oh so difficult for me to learn. (nah reality is I've become too lazy to learn proper French.)

My point is that I am a jack of all trades and master of none in languages and actually in everything I do. I may be good and maybe even great in most things I do, but I will never reach that point I can call myself a master. This could possibly make writing a bit more difficult for me.

Writing is hard and often times difficult work, but I know from experience that if I make the effort my work will be good to great. I may sound arrogant, but it's just my experience with knowing myself. I am above average in anything I do and when I put some effort in it I may be good to great. (Maybe it's indeed arrogance.)

About the children book, it's about a chick born from within a black egg. He's born with a never satisfied hunger, he wants to eat and eat and eat. A children horror story about a chick and his food, with toned down violence and gore. I'm not even sure about the age group it would fall into, I suspect it to be between 8-10.

I started writing the story at request of my daughter. Being the kind dad that I am, I complied. When finished I'll try get it published. I even might do a sequel and an English translation.

Besides writing for my daughter I started with another story. I just finished the first chapter last weekend. Like I previously said editing is boring so I need the diversion of creating. If all goes well this year I may finish the first draft of the new story by years end.