Pinishi!

At the school where I work, students feel the need to announce every time they complete a task--even if its something as menial as writing their name or the date on the paper. This announcement usually comes in the form of "pinishi" which is a Korean pronunciation of "finish."

I have been trying to break my students of this habit, or at the very least compromise by having them say, "I am finished."

As I had mentioned before, I have been participating in the National Novel Writing Month. The goal of the contest is for participants to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. There were many times when the task seemed so far away. My procrastination combined with writer's block is visible from my word count chart below from the nanowrimo website.


On the 15th, I should have been at the halfway-point at 25,000 words, but was only at about 14,000. You can also see that I wrote about half of the 50,000 words in the last five days. I spent 12 hours straight writing this past Sunday and that helped me get back on track. After Sunday, words just flowed out.

I actually have quite a bit more to write just to tie everything together and to flesh out some of the themes I've been working on. But tonight, after I cruised in with those final few thousand words to put me over the line, I celebrated the only way that seemed natural: I stood, punched my fist in the air and shouted, "Pinishi!"

So, I got this little image to display on the site. Its just a completion award but its one of the most beautiful logos I've ever seen.