As you all know, I’m feeling far more comfortable writing in Dutch than in English. In Dutch I’m not only writing faster (Rykers’ challenge or Ryker’s challenge or maybe even Rykers Challenge – simple things like that take ages) – (thank you google translate), but my vocabulary in Dutch is of course 1000 times more comprehensive. In English I’d have to opt for the ‘easy’ words. More eloquent words can be a possible minefield (thank you thesaurus.com), risking to choose the wrong word within the context and you make an ass of yourself. Another thing that is driving me mad is the wrong sentence structure in English. Where the Dutch use adjectives before a noun, the English convert the sentence so they don’t have to add -ly after each and every adjective. (I’m not even talking about measurements, daytimes, weights, length’s etc.)
So, yes. It’s a challenge.
That’s the reason I started Ryker’s challenge. It started with a blogpost of a mr. Eddie Davidson titled “How you can reward and motivate this author” over on storiesonline.net. In this blogpost there was a quote I want to share with you, because it kind of struck a chord with me:
What I want to do, though is ask you in the nice way possible – if you read my stuff and want to GIVE BACK to me? Consider writing a story if you haven’t even done it before.
On 27 July, or July 27th if you like, I accepted mr. Davidson’s challenge and started the challenge of mr. Ryker Vermeer. This is how he looks like (this might be his twin, so eerie is the resemblance):
It’s now 1 september 2023 and I’m 71.349 words so far. I’m posting here all I’ve written, so you can follow along and watch with glee how I struggle to finish “Ryker’s Challenge”.