Graduation Project

I just handed in my graduation project 2 days ago and I'm still in a state of wonder and helpless fear and anticipation...

I go through obsessive stages where I reread my project and just get myself in a full blown panic...

Or I let my sisters calm me down. My youngest sister whose 11 and laughed her head off at the first draft now praises it and tells my mum how her sister is going to be an author. My writer friends comment and analyze and suggest things to me...Everyone's help has been absolutely invaluable to me...but the truth is I was rushed. I took the graduation project in the summer and my teacher allowed me to email him updates from my travels...

The standard graduation projects in our university for the English College is either a research paper about teaching, literature, or linguistics or a Translation with a commentary.

So what happened was a certain freshman started bragging about how she was going to write a novel as a graduation project...I went to double check the rumour and was told that it wasn't an appropriate measure for a student's abilities! I argued that translation is also a measure of a student's style and what is the difference...
I finally went to the Vice Dean with my proposal to write a novel as a graduation project and asked dubious questions...and finally given the okay, as long as i provided a six page commentary about the difficulties.

I was too confident, I think lol

I have never ever written a whole novel to the very end. I never exerted so much discipline upon myself to stick to a plan, to consider rising action, plot, and the impact of a charachter...so many things, I had to think about. I even had to put my criticising cap on and go back and criticize if i was on the right track.

I finally finished. Its not absoluuuuuuuuutely perfect. I had a dead line and I was rushed, but to me, its everything.

In a fit of exhaustion, after 8 hours straight tapping at the laptop I pledged to take a break from writing...my sisters all had orders to get me to stop obsessing.
On the way to Osaka from Sapporro, while I was reading a book full of appreciation for the blood sweat and tears of writers, I started obsessing, this time about publishing....and expanding my novel. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

I have a hell of a semester left. I'm letting my novel go for awhile, but hugging the sense of reward and pride to me always. I'm trying to enjoy my holiday in Japan.

This year I visited Sapporro which is a small town in Hokkaido. Its beautiful and picturesque and as cold as any city in Europe. There was a nearby town Oturo which is seriously a slice of switzerland in Japan