Gold Coast, Australia

Views from Marina Mirage, Main Beach

A bit of uneven tanning going on here. Must stay away from the strong sunblock.

A dragon lizard on our walk at Burleigh

Back on the Gold Coast

I love the Gold Coast. It's got to be one of the best places in the world. The sun shines, the people are friendly and it's such a relaxed atmostphere that there's no better place to be. I'm back. Back home in Australia and loving it. While for now it's only for a three week holiday, it's a much needed break. Two days in I'm already red and sun burnt. The weather is great and there's so much to do and see.

Already been out for a delicious pizza at Alto's in Broadbeach, yummy. And ice-cream at Baskin & Robbins. I've caught up with my best friend and relaxed on the beach. Three more weeks of sleeping in, swimming, sunbathing, eating delicious food, and having a great time - and hopefully coming up with article ideas. Gotta love holidays.

Choices

Everyone has a choice. Young. Old. Rich. Poor. We all have a choice. Sometimes we like our choices. Sometimes we don't. Either way, the choices we make are our own. Often external factors influence our choices, in the end we are left with making a decision. Occasionally our choices are limited or unsatisfactory, however we are still responsibility for making them, regardless of whether we like or dislike them. This was another one of my TEFL topics today and it made me think about some of the choices I have made.

Then comes the issue of good and bad choices. Is there such a thing? Or does each choice inevitably lead us towards the same direction and destination just via a slightly different path? I'm not an expert so I'm not sure, but what I like to believe that is if we want to achieve something, the choices we make along the way are extremely important.

Today I made the choice to get up, go to work and teach all day. I also made the choice to do more work and write for this blog late at night when I should be going to sleep. Why did I make these choices? Probably because no one is going to do these things for me. If I wanted the standard of living I have, it's necessary for me to do this. If I want to achieve my goals, I have to do these things. Result? Job satisfaction, money, one step closer to achieving my goals.

On the other hand I could have not gotten out of bed and decided it was much more pleasurable to stay under the warm duvet and forget about work. I could have spent the day in front of the television, drinking or eating too much or simply not doing anything at all. The choice was mine. Result? Possibility of job loss, less money, a backwards move.

Obviously, each choice would come with a consequence. This consequence could have dramatic effects on my life, as it can on yours, thinking about the consequences I was able to make the choice that would have the more positive result.

Our circumstances do influence the choices we have to make. However, we can always change our situations in order to have a different set of choices. Certain individuals choose to work hard and keep going until they succeed, while others give up and think it's all too hard before they've even tested the playing field. That's why they say that the only difference between the published writers and the unpublished ones, is that the published are those who never gave up and chose to persevere. I'm going to choose the same. How about you?

Busy, Busy, Busy

Busy. Busy. Busy. Now that's got to be the understatement of the month. I have no idea where November disappeared to. One thing I do know is that it has been a busy month with lots of things happening and even more getting done. At the beginning of the month I set off to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge and write 50,000 words in 30 days. Well I am pleased to say that I managed to reach this amount today. Just. I slacked off a little bit halfway through but managed to pick up the pace near the end of last week. While the story still has a little bit go before it's actually finished I plan to complete the rough draft by next week. It'll be a struggle but I'm willing to put in the effort.

This month has left me running around a lot. I'm going back to Australia next week for a long overdue holiday. I'm so excited. I haven't been back for two and a half years. Wow. I can't believe it. It feels like only a month ago that the plane touched down in Warsaw. My intended holiday turned into an indefinite stay. But it's been enjoyable and a huge learning experience. I'm not going alone. My partner is coming, and his younger cousin. It's going to be exciting for them both to discover a new country.

We've had to get passports sorted, visas, tickets and insurance. I have to say that organising the visa was easier than I imagined. It took ten minutes to complete the application on-line and seven hours later we had an emailed visa approval. Simple and free of any hassles.

Now that's all organised I've still got presents to purchase and last minute things to get done before we live. Even though we are only travelling for three weeks I am completely stressing out. Technically I am going home. Australia is my home. It'll always be my home. But I'm scared. I can't predict how I am going to react. It's bizarre but a part of me is a little bit afraid. While there are no expectations, there are definitely many things on the 'to do' and 'to see' list while we are over there.

So what keeps us motivated?

I have friends who are self motivated, and others who have no idea what they want to achieve in life. While we all go through phases where we don't have goals or we're not really thinking about anything ambitious, but then comes a time when it's necessary to shake things up a little bit and go further. Achieve something. Do something that matters to you. That's why I find it difficult to understand how someone doesn't have goals, the only thing that explains it is that they haven't yet found what they're passionate about.

How does one get motivated to do great things? To set goals and work to achieve them? Keep going even when faced with obstacles that appear impossible to overcome?

The things that motivate me might not be motivating for you or someone else. On the other hand your own motivations may have little or no influence on me. That's fine. We all have to find what works for us.

My goals motivate me because they are my own. I've always wanted to be a writer. This fact alone makes me want to keep writing, keep sending out queries and working towards a career as a freelance writer. I've made a few mistakes this year and I hope to amend them and become a successful freelance writer. This motivates me. When I see my name in print it motivates me. When someone says something positive about my writing, it motivates me. When I make some money from my writing, it motivates me. When my writing touches someone, it motivates me.
At the beginning of the month I had a goal to complete 50,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo. How have I stayed motivated? Well, the goal is important to me and I want to prove to myself that I have it in me to achieve the 50,000 mark and beyond. If I don't finish I know that I'll be kicking myself. My motivation is the desire to make a full time living from being a writer. I know that if I don't do it, no one is going to do it for me. The same goes for your own goals. No one is going to achieve them for you. But the best thing is the sweet feeling of success in the end. Nothing in the world can buy that. Unfortunately throughout the past couple of weeks I've had limited writing time and lots of wasting time. Now I'm playing catch up.

Another thing I want to do is run a marathon. How do I stay motivated to train and actually do it? Yesterday I tested myself whether I was capable of running for over an hour. I am. I managed ninety minutes and 17.5km. That's the most I've ever run. This also tells me that I am capable of running the half marathon. I've set myself a goal to run one in March. My motivation is that I've set a goal, I've made it public and now I got to do it. It's also a way to keep me in shape and allow me to eat reasonably what I want without worrying about weight gain. It's something I always wanted to do because it's within my control. Once I complete that I'll start training for the full marathon.

It's important to have goals that mean something to you personally in order to stay motivated and keep going with something. These goals also need to be achievable. Thinking that you'll write a novel in a month when you've barely finished a short story isn't going to keep you motivated, it's going to look overwhelming and impossible. Writing five hundred words a day on the other hand may be achievable. The same goes for running a marathon. To stay motivated for the long term it's vital to have short term goals. Run three times this week. Include interval training next week. Start in a 5km or 10km to practice running in large groups. These goals are less overwhelming but they bring you a step closer to the final goal. Running a marathon. Writing a novel. Or achieving whatever else you want to achieve.

So now I'm going back to my writing, I've got a goal to reach and story to finish.

Plain or Sophisticated?

There's something relaxing and motivating about sitting in cafés and writing. They're one of my favourite places to write. The only prerequisite is a comfy table, good coffee and quality sandwiches. Whether what I write is legible, decent or crap is irrelevant. The most important thing is that I manage to put words on paper. I can worry about coherence later.

In one of today's TEFL lessons my students and I discussed the issue of communication. For writers communication is very important. That's what we do. Our purpose is to communicate information across to our reader in the most comprehensible way while trying to avoid jargon and verbose prose. Instead we want brevity that will transfer all the information necessary as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Should we use plain or sophisticated language?

I found there's a mixed argument when it comes to deciding on an answer. It all depends on your audience. Are you going to communicate with doctors, lawyers, and business professionals? Or students, housewives and the general public? If you have a look at most consumer magazines, they are written in plain language that a primary school student is likely to understand. Trade magazines on the other hand use more technical terminology. Once you're clear on that you can safely decide whether throw in a bit of sophisticated jargon or stick to the plain, intelligible stuff. My language use is usually very plain. I talk to people who sometimes try to throw in fancy words to sound intelligent but unless it serves a larger purpose it downright sounds silly. Personally, I don't see the point in using terminology that makes you sound smart but no one understands.

So the conclusion I've come to is;

- avoid rambling
- limit the use of jargon because it's likely you won't be understood
- use brevity to get your point across effectively
- verbose prose with technical terminology will not necessarily make you sound more intelligent
- effective communication is important whether you're speaking or writing
- in the end do what feels most comfortable for you

For me this shows that I need to be more aware of my audience, and keep jargon, buzzwords and slang to a minimum. Yes, sometimes it's nice to use fancy words, just make sure they work with your topic and its purpose. In the end, which you choose to use will depend on what you're writing, who you're writing for, and your personal writing style.

Evaluating Ourselves

Once again it's grey outside. The sky grows darker with every minute and at about 5pm it's going to be nightfall. While it isn't as cold as usual for November, about five to ten degrees throughout the day, it's been a wet month so far, and I can't remember when I last saw some sunshine. Two weeks ago, maybe three. The only thing worth doing when it's like this is snuggling under a warm blanket with a good book and a hot cup of tea. Sounds lovely, if there wasn't so much work to do.

Yesterday's post left me thinking about a lot of things in my life. This morning I stumbled upon an interesting post from Scott H Young about failure and success (www.scotthyoung.com/blog). He talks about rushing for our goal, but not being patient enough to get a taste of success. While we underestimate what we are capable of achieving, when it comes to time frames we're always rushing and wanting immediate results. We want everything right now. It's like that with money. It's like that with success. We want it all at electrifying speed. That's how I've always wanted things to happen too.

I've been writing since I was a little girl. I recall writing short stories at school, a small illustrated children's book at age ten. Poetry later in primary school, and lots of journal writing. At about twelve or thirteen I began writing longer stories, then I attempted numerous novels which ended up in the trash can. I wanted success quickly. I wanted it right away. What I didn't realise though was that I could be a writer. Even when people didn't take my dream seriously, I knew that it was possible. What I didn't know was how long it was going to take me.

Sixteen years later I am still writing. My apprenticeship continues. I have learnt a lot but there's still so much that I must learn. Only two years ago did I build up the courage to send my writing out to magazines. And guess what? I got published. Not right away. Not always paid. But I got published. My only regret is that I didn't start out sooner. That I was afraid of showing anyone my writing. I suppose this blog is also helping me over come that fear. That's why it's important to follow your dreams, work hard towards success and don't just think about the end result, enjoy the progress and sooner or alter success will follow.

It's still grey outside but I'm inside doing what I love doing most. Creating stories, coming up with article ideas and writing away. It takes time but it does happen. It's one step closer to making a living as a writer.