On November 29th at 11:44 PM MST, I officially became a novelist. Amazingly enough, my word count reached 50,000, and I completed NaNoWriMo a whole day early. That's right, my friends, I have now joined an elite group of people who can say they've written a long-winded, poorly thought out, plotless pile of crap.
Whenever I explain to someone about writing a novel, they invariably ask at least one of the following questions:
1. What is it about?
2. Can I read it?
In order to save myself the trouble of repeating these answers even more than I already do, I will conveniently post my response to each of them.
1. I don't feel the necessity to reveal that information at this point.
2. No. The NaNoWriMo challenge is to write a novel in 30 days. It says nothing about writing a good novel in 30 days. As it stands, my novel is a disgrace to the good name of literature. It is fraught with plot holes and mediocre character development, and it contradicts itself on multiple occasions. (I think my main character has three different last names throughout the course of the novel). However, this goes beyond merely being embarrassed of shoddy work, though. When you write a novel (at least, it's this way for me), you put part of yourself into your work, and you become very attached to it. Giving someone your manuscript would be like giving them your firstborn. I mean, you put your heart and soul into this thing nonstop for 30 days! It's like handing your diary over to someone and saying "Here, evaluate my inner self". So no, you may not read my novel. Maybe after multiple rewrites and revisions, but that's a long way off.
Moving on.
There's no way I could have completed this on my own. I'd like to thank the following people:
-My wonderfully supportive mother, who dragged me out of bed on my only days off of school to work on my novel.
-My sister, for deciding to have cookies at her wedding reception. The leftovers sustained me through many long nights.
-All the people who cheered me on, or even just gave me strange looks when I told them what I was doing. If anything, it made me reaffirm to myself just why I was undertaking this crazy task.
-Charles Bartowski II, my laptop. He put up with the stressful demands of novel writing like a champ.
-The dictionary, thesaurus, spell check, and other helpful tools conveniently embedded in my word processor.
-Collin, for this awesome comment when we were discussing the pathetic nature of our novels. (He had just informed me that he wasn't going to finish) "Hey, at least it's 50,000 words worth. You made a mark. Mine is just going to be swept under the rug of failure while yours boldly stains it."
And so I have, against the odds, boldly stained the Rug of Failure. I have written a novel. It may not be the greatest, but it is mine.
Boo yah!
1 Wonderful Comments:
This is your conscience.....you will let your sister read your novel....
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