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Hi, everyone. The name’s Amanda. It seems you people might like to know something about me. Huh. Now isn’t that a novel idea…
Well, hi. *waves* So far I’ve lived sixteen-and-a-bit years on this wonderful planet, and I’m pretty sure I’ve had a flawed sense of humor since the time I first spoke. I’ve been making up stories for almost that long, but I only started writing seriously around age 13, when I found the Go Teen Writers blog and realized why my stories were always so boring and meandering (ever heard of a plot, younger me?). I actually stumbled up Kingdom Pen around that time as well, and I subscribed to the e-mag back then, but didn’t really ever look at the website again because I didn’t have any short stories or poetry to send in. Fast forward a couple years, and now there’s more going on than there was back then, and here I am!
As for my non-writing life, I’m the oldest of seven crazy children who all live on what a friend affectionately dubbed a “postage-stamp sized lot” in the suburbs of Tampa, Florida. I have a long-time fascination with the country and farms, however, so if I find out you live on a farm, beware. I’ll probably grill you about it frequently. Especially if you have animals. Ahem. Moving on. Other than writing (and reading, obviously), I enjoy photography, singing, a little graphic design, and learning lots of “random” languages. As of this moment, I know a good bit of Spanish but am a bit rusty, because Dutch has been my focus for the past…oh, approaching two years. So I’d say I’m at the intermediate level in both, but don’t try to test me on that Spanish thing. This summer I’ve also dipped my toes in Ukrainian, Turkish, and Esperanto, with my favorite being the latter. (By the way, in case anyone’s still wondering what “Saluton” means, it’s a greeting in Esperanto.) I could go on and on about languages, but I’ll spare you that. You’re welcome.
I’m also a violinist. Why did I not list this with the things I enjoy? The simple answer is, I have a love/hate relationship with violin. Let’s just leave it with that, shall we?
Anyway, hi! Looking forward to meeting everyone and sharing some good times.
Jumbo Amanda! (that’s all the more Swahili I know:)
Wow! I am so amazed by the multitude of languages you’ve taken on and learned! My family lines have some Dutch in them so I was excited to hear that you speak it! What’s one of your favorite Dutch words?
Yay go violins! For how long have you played?
Ooo and what kind of genre do you like to write the best?
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I learned “jambo” at a VBS when I was…oh, gracious, I don’t know. Eight, maybe? 🙂
Now, just to get things straight, I’m not very advanced in anything. Spanish and Dutch are the only two I could maybe have a conversation in, and even then, speaking is way harder for me than, say, reading. 🙂 As for my favorite word…probably “paraplu” (umbrella is pretty funny in any language, I think!). Though I also got a kick out of “tandpasta.” 🙂 It’s actually an interesting story how I got started in Dutch…basically, one of my writing buddies is Dutch, and after she helped me edit my first novel, I joked “Now I just have to learn Dutch so I can help you with yours!” and she took me seriously. So we email in almost exclusively Dutch now, which is still fairly difficult for me, but it is fun. I learned most of my Dutch from the free site Duolingo, which is pretty good for reading, okay for writing, “meh” for listening, and basically non-existent for speaking. But hey, for free, it did a pretty great job.
–And see, I told you I could talk forever on this…whoops.
Well, as for violin, technically I’ve played since summer 2013, but it’s been really on-and-off. So as for playing consistently, since May. I’m self-taught, you see, and for some reason it’s been more difficult to stay motivated with than other things I’ve taught myself. I’d say I’m at about the later stages of beginner. Are you a violinist, too? 🙂
Genre…now that’s a tricky question. Up until about two years ago I was contemporary all the way. But then I wrote a sort of adventure/dystopian with a tiny bit of fantasy mixed in and that was really fun. So I’m not really sure. Contemporary still has a high place, though, for sure. How about you?
Ha! You are so punny! 😀
Man, I can relate to so much of what you’ve said. Especially the thing about the fascination with farms.
Also, the love-hate relationship with the violin. It’s my favorite to play, but it’s oh-so-difficult. Just work with me, vibrato, will you?? Or maybe some position work? Woo, fun stuff that I really should be practicing…
Wow, it’s so cool you’re learning so many languages. I’ve had ~2.5 years of Spanish. Don’t test me on that, either. One year of French. Uh…I can still remember how to say hi–does that count? And roughly a year of Swahili under my belt. (Funny…I’m not actually wearing a belt right now, but you know what I mean) On a side note: one of my younger brothers is teaching himself Russian! *applauds*
So it’s not just me with the weird farm fascination?! YES!
Vibrato…somehow that’s been like the one thing that hasn’t killed me. I’m really surprised. Mainly right now my issues are playing fast and clearly at the same time. Oh, and hooked bowing. For some reason I’m terrible at that. I’m not to positions yet, thankfully. 🙂
I laughed at the “I can still remember to say hi.” I totally understand. At one point in the middle of my Dutch-learning journey, I went to go and say something in Spanish and found I couldn’t remember the word for “what.” Like I just completely blanked. That freaked me out a bit–“Did I seriously forget all this? FOUR YEARS’ WORTH OF WORK?!”–so I went back and reviewed some. Thankfully I didn’t actually forget it all…
Russian! Nice! It’s very similar to Ukrainian. It took me about a week just to get the Cyrillic alphabet down. I actually learned that mainly by a Ukrainian touch typing practice thing…
I love country life. I’ve never lived in the countryside, but I belong there. 😉
Okay, vibrato is really fun, but sometimes it just doesn’t work and it’s frustrating and I wish it was like 100x better. YES playing fast and clear and not bow-bouncing is so difficult! Ay! Hooked bowing…I’m not familiar with that term. I’ve been ‘playing’ since I was in fourth grade and I don’t think I’ve heard that before–or, at least, not too much. Ah, relish the time you have before you start positions. I can’t even with them. They are so difficult I’ve thought about re-adding stickers to my fingerboard to help. But if you know them you can do so much more D’:
YES I KNOW, the same thing happens to me!!! Or sometimes I’ll mix up my French and Spanish words and it’s just…a jumble of who-knows-what.
A Ukrainian touch typing thing?? Whaaat? That sounds so cool. What is it?
Hello Amanda! Glad to have you on the forum! I also didn’t realize you have been with us since the Emag days. That’s so cool!
And hey! You live only about 2 and a half hours from me. 😀
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If I can jump in here, I play violin as well! Vibrato…… I feel you. I can play it with two fingers but the others need a lot of practice. Which I should do. But I don’t.
AAAAAH why is it doing this to me? The forum simply will NOT let me answer y’all… I give up for now. It let me post something short and then when I tried to edit it to add in the answers, the post disappeared. I apologize if several somewhat similar posts suddenly show up later. For now…I’ll just save what I wrote somewhere else and try again later. Sigh.
Maybe it’s the link that’s messing this up. So I’m going to try it this way.
Rachel: Hooked bowing = slurs only with split-second stops in between notes. You’ve probably done them before. 🙂 The Ukrainian touch typing thing…well, it was just a website I found while looking for an alphabet chart. I think it’s typingstudy(dot)com. They have lots of languages, actually. 🙂
Reagan: Hi! Yeah, I’ve been around since the days of Eli. I actually sort of remember having random conversations in Google+ comments with Eli and Anna. Wow, that was a long time ago… And I ended up on Kingdom Pen from your blog, originally. Speaking of which, if you remember the post submitted a while back that really had nothing to do with writing (whoops) that you kindly offered to put on your blog instead, that was me as well. 🙂 And cool on the two and a half hours thing. I’m guessing that’s south?
Jada: I get what you mean about the practicing thing. I can do it okay with my 2nd and 3rd fingers, iffy with 1st, and not at all with 4th. And I can’t really do it in songs yet, so just playing random notes to practice on is boring. Sigh!
HOORAY! Success!
Lesson learned: Don’t post links, guys. It’s probably gonna send the post to a spam box.
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YES! Same here! I can sort of do it with the first and fourth fingers but it is so much harder. I can use a little of it in songs but not too much. Where/what do you play? I play in church by chord sheets and by ear so it is a lot different than say he Suzuki method.
Okay, yeah, I’ve done hooked bowing before. 😉
Jada, how long have you been playing?
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I have been playing since I was seven, which was eight years ago. I took lessons for about five of those years. How about you?
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