Day #30: Showtime

Brought my "words left to write" count back to the 4 digits (this is down from over 15,000 mind you).
I am now at 40,372 words, 63 pages. Technically, I have 10 hours to complete the last 9,628 words required to hit 50,000 (which translates to roughly 16 pages, single spaced). With classes and that history paper I have yet to start that's due at 10am, I probably only have half that time to complete all that writing. The words and pages better fly. COME ON MUSES. Don't fail me now.
I'll keep this brief, since I do have a paper on Locke to write (thank goodness for IPLE, I practically know John Locke by heart).

Favorite Sentence:Her eyes wander across the computer screen, glazing over slightly as she reaches the end of the gossipy news story that had originally interrupted her attention span, which is currently at the same level as a goldfish, or hyperactive ADD squirrel.

Sappiest Line:He shakes his head. “There are no words left to say. Only all the unsaid to act on.”

Passage:
But his sharp eyes pick out the tiny details that put together the story behind this object as well. Spread across the lower right hand corner of the first few pages is a slight warping effect, the result of an overwhelming volume of fluids that soaked into the paper fibers, the evidence of a splashing of angry tears that probably blurred her vision as she flipped through the beginnings of the screenplay. Scattered throughout the entire document are random pages that are slightly yellower than the rest, the pages that she loved best, the fragments of half-fictitious memories that made her happy in the loneliest first days of being in this enormous city. He notices the strangely perfect flatness of each page, the lack of a fold or crease anywhere. It has been put away somewhere, buried deep between textbooks perhaps, or something of similar weight and composition, carefully preserved and hidden from sight and mind. He looks down at the brief note, underlined exactly by the pink ribbon, he wrote to her in his scrawled handwriting eight years ago: Do you remember two summers ago, when you told me to write you a song? Well here’s your song, plus interest. His fingers tremble slightly as he unties the ribbon and flips to the next page, the one that announces to the world, in bold, scripted letters, “Emma’s Play.”

Day #18: Post 10kword sprint

My writing skills are either really good, or just really insane. Or both. Many artists are insane.
When I wrote an 8page (double spaced) paper in two hours, I thought that was pretty good. Yes, that is quite a WPM rate; my roommate said my typing sounded like a machine gun going off. But college papers are easily structured and outlined. You basically just need to list the points that you want to cover, dig out a few good quotes from your sources, and then string the ideas together with fancy, SAT vocabulary.
Novels, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter. There is absolutely nothing to follow. At least not with the way I write novels. Literally what I have to do is sit there staring into blankness, mentally prodding my characters along, possibly speaking to them (in my head, usually), until they decide to do something interesting and worth writing about. It is the most agonizingly slow process ever. But, in the past three days, I somehow wrote 10,000 words in my novel, with the majority of it in just the past two days. I am mind blown; I never knew I could write so much in such a short span of time.

Here be the breakdown of my pathetically-behind-until-a-few-minutes-ago word count:

Nov. 15th: 20,311
Nov. 16th: 20,818
Nov. 17th: 25,826
Nov. 18th: 30,081

And it's not even 10pm yet!

DAY #15: [supposed to be] Halfway Point

I should be at 25,000. I'm 5,000 words behind. 10 freaking pages. No biggie. I love how I can write 8 page papers in 2 hours but it takes so long to write 10 pages of a novel. What happened to the days where I could sprint through 5 chapters a day, clearing several thousand words at a time? Upsetting, but at least these past few chapters have been moving the plot along, instead of that one random chapter in which literally NOTHING HAPPENS except pointless (but nevertheless really cute) dialogue.

Anyway. Here's some of what I've accomplished today (from chapter 6)

“Shhh,” Allie hushes. “Let her finish.”

Emma smiles slightly and keeps talking as if nothing had interrupted her. “The day I left, he came over with a box of brownies that his mom made…”

Livy smiles and croons a sincere and heartfelt “awwwwww,” ignoring the side glances from her other friends.

“… some flowers, and a giant packet,” Emma continues. “He gave me the brownies and flowers first, told me to put them in the car, and then took me by the hand and led me around to the backyard, under our tree.”

“Now how can you say things like that and then claim that you guys weren’t in a relationship?” Reina accuses in exasperation.

Emma shrugs. “I don’t know. We were really close friends. He was always grabbing me by the hand; that was normal for us.”

Reina lets out an impatient sigh; Livy pats her gently on the shoulder and tells her to be quiet so Emma can finish the story. “You guys were standing under your tree,” Livy prompts.

“Yea. And he handed me the packet. It was freaking huge, and all wrapped up with a huge ribbon. I asked him what it was. He didn’t answer my question. He just gave me a really long hug and said, ‘good luck in New York City. You’re getting the chance that the rest of us aren’t going to have. When you make it to Broadway, don’t forget us here in Clermont. And don’t look at this until you get into the car.’ He made me promise I wouldn’t look at the packet, and I promised.”

“Well what was the packet?” Reina asks.

Emma closes her eyes. The mysterious packet is sitting right now squarely in the middle of her desk. It is dusty from being hidden in a box for so long, but the conditions of the pages are pristine. She has taken such good care of it. “The first page had a note. It said ‘do you remember two summers ago, when you told me to write you a song?’

“Of course I did. I actually got kind of upset at that point, because I realized that I was going to leave and never get my song. Anyway, under the question, he wrote ‘Here’s your song, plus interest.’

“I flipped the page, and the next page was a title page.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. Tears collect onto the edges of her eyelids, quivering, threatening.

“What was the title?” Livy asks quietly, her voice full of expressive concern.

Emma takes another deep breath. “It was a script. For a musical titled Emma’s Play. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.”

Day #11: 11/11/11 (Wish Away)

11/11/11.

More importantly, twice today, it will be 11/11/11 11:11:11

This only happens once in a lifetime. I'd better make it good.
I get two wishes today. I missed my first by a minute, leaving me actually distraught for several seconds.



So what should I do with the most epic wishing hour of the century?
I can wish for something meaningfully cliche, like world peace. Or I can wish for something obnoxiously impossible, like the sudden raining down of Jamasen's chocolate truffles from the sky, or a good grade on the Macro exam. I can also wish for some really sappy thing that I shall not disclose here, or for a sensible Confucian-esque thing like wisdom, or success.
I still have a little under ten hours to ponder this. But, as with everything else, I hate to plan. I tend to take life as it comes. I prefer constant movement, constant progress, over stagnated and pointless pondering of things that don't have answer anyway. So when the next 11:11:11 comes, hopefully my brain will suddenly be hit with an amazing wish worthy of this once in a century opportunity.

Until then, too all of you out there across the time zones, wish away.

NaNoWriMo Day #6

The weekend festivities offered no inspiration. Sorry :(
What did propel me forward 2000 words is Stephen's nonstop promotion of Wicked, and in particular, Defying Gravity. That song inspires like no other. So thank you for that :)
I am now listening to music and thinking again in literary terms & plot lines. The inner writer has reconnected herself with my brain, so I will be spewing random things that seem disconnected from real life (because I am living in fiction).

Excerpt from today (a piece of chapter 3). Just goes to show how much I absolutely adore this school.

Twelve schools, twenty-one total essays, and several months later, the letters started coming back. Nearly five months later, on the last week of August, Anthony arrived with his two, giant suitcases of belongings and stood, full of self-satisfaction and a sense of complete awe, in front of the enormous marble sign that marked the North entrance to the Johns Hopkins University. Situated in the heart of Charm City—Baltimore, Maryland, with one of the best Writing Seminars programs in the country, an amazing soccer team (albeit Division III), and the added quirk that his freshman dorm room gave him the same exact view of the University as it gave writer F. Scott Fitzgerald when he stayed in the same building decades ago, it was everything that Anthony could have possibly hoped for. And so began Anthony [insertlastnamehere]’s own breakout story.

While we're here, DOES SOMEONE WANT TO GIVE ME A LAST NAME? The character is white....
Please and thank you!

NaNoWriMo Day #1

And so begins another month of feverish & insane writing. 50,000 words in 30 days.
I completed it in 17 days in freshman year. I wrote through the Model UN research and conference packed days of sophomore and junior year. I even did it senior year of high school between college applications and IPLE speeches (UNIT 1: I was novelling and researching/writing about natural rights at the same time on Nov. 30th last year. I can admit that now that we're the best unit in the country).

I can definitely handle 50,000 words, 30 days, freshman year of college. Emma's Play is the story waiting to be told.

Insane accomplishment: