It's French class, and like every day lately, we have a sub and a work period. Deprived of things to do (actually work on my project? Perish the thought!), I've decided that my writing vacation can go on break and I can update my blog.
Let's see. What have I done in the past two weeks? Lots! Last week I had something different every day of the week, except Friday. Sometimes more than one thing! On Monday, I was supposed to go home for the second half of the day to wirite, but Brian took off with the car, and Papa was in Montreal and left (as usual) his car at the airport. So I was stuck. So I stayed. After school, I had a meeting with Mr Dearden (English teacher) and Keira (cica in English class) about the 'Evening of Culture'. If you're going to be in Calgary on the 15th of December, come! It will be... uh... culturous. Yeah, that's it. Anyways, that's what this French project is for, incidentally. But I'm also doing a couple of things with Drama club. Which is why I was meeting with Dearden, assistant Drama Club organizer and ex-Drama teacher. And I must say, why on EARTH did he change to English? I mean, he's an excellent English teacher, but watching him work with Keira was awesome. She improved more in that one 15-minute session than in all of last year's Drama and Speech classes combined.
Anyways. That was my Monday. Because I couldn't go home early on Monday (November 29, if you're not keeping track), Mama let me stay home all day Tuesday (November 30!!!!!). I had about 8000 words left. Remember the rest of the month, when I had trouble writing a measly 3000 a day? Well, I woke up at 8 30 AM (setting my alarm, I might add) and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more for good measure. And took one break, for about 15-20 minutes, when Inga came online. Because I hadn't talked to her since the beginning of November. I also took another 10-15 minute break when my mother dragged me downstairs to talk and eat.
While I was downstairs at that time, one of my mother's best friends, Vera, called. They've been friends since the age of sixteen, and I've called her Auntie Booba my entire life. When she wondered why I was home in the middle of the day, I told her that I was writing a 50k word novel this month, it was the last day, and I had 10k left. Do you know what she said to me? "Oh, you'll finish soon. If anyone can do it, you can." Or something like that. But she automatically assumed that I would finish. Not a single doubt in her mind. She hadn't even KNOWN I was writing it, and she had no doubt I'd finish.
Now that kept me going for at least 3 000 more words.
Also as I wrote, I started going writing-crazy. I heard voices. I heard people calling my name. I saw things out of the corner of my eye. And I got seriously freaking creeped out.
When everybody else got home from school and started coming online, I got the update on how Becca was doing. She was exactly where she wanted to be on word count, of course. I cheered when she cruised the 50 000-word mark around 6 30-7 PM. I kept writing while she attempted to get it verified, only to find there was a problem with the server and she couldn't! I kept writing, and just as Becca proclaimed that it had FINALLY worked, when I had only 200 words left...
Dinner was ready.
And Kai had been making Drunken Bang Bang (lmao I love that name) Chicken somewhat in honor of my accomplishment. 200 words! Only 200 left! And I had to go down to dinner.
Giddy much?
Yeah, I was giddy on the fact that I was almost done, the fact that my brother had put on IMA Robot on the stereo, and the fact that I was starving and half-mad from writing. I danced, skipped and laughed my way through my scarfed-down dinner and ran upstairs to finish.
And I finished.
I finished with fifty thousand, four hundred and fifty-three words. At 8 04 PM. And you know what else?
I FINISHED MY NOVEL. I didn't just finish the 50k, like Becca did. I finished my novel, complete with an epilogue. Now it needs a good spell check and a lot of work, of course, but I finished the entire novel.
Do a little dance! Make a little love! Get down tonight!
I had absolutely no trouble verifying it, either. And I got my awesome little banner that proclaims that I am a NaNoNovelist! And I got a certificate! A certificate! I'm going to print it out on good paper soon and fill it out with a calligraphy pen, and then frame it.
But as I browsed through the winners list later, I realised that there was something wrong. There was no 'Kung Fu Fighter', Becca's username, and no 'Alexandera Bluff', Becca's pen name. There wasn't even 'Rebecca Coulson'. Her verifying hadn't wroked after all! She had updated her word count, but she had no 'Winner!' verification.
What to do? It was closing in a few hours, and she most likely wasn't going to be back online to try again. I couldn't just let her go unrecognised...
So I verified mine on her account.
Yeah, I know. It was a bad, bad thing to do. But she had written 51 000 words, and we all knew it. It wasn't her fault that the website hated her. The word counter online only makes sure that you've written more than 50k. You could encode your novel by switching all As and Bs for Hs and Js if you wanted to, and it wouldn't matter. It doesn't count exactly how many, either, so it worked out perfectly. She ended up on the Winners list with averified word count and her own number inputted in, so it wasn't even like it was my word count on her profile. So I'm not a bad person! I just couldn't stand to see a month's work go to waste!
And Tasha (who's birthday it is today!) finished too. In case you're wondering who the heck Tasha is, well she's a friend of ours who was bored at the hospital for seven hours halfway through the month and decided to join, writing 27 000 words in those three days. She finished like three days before we did, too. So HURRAH! for us all. We all deserve hugs. Becca got me a mask, and I got her chocolate. We both gave Tasha birthday gifts and cards today instead of 'Congrats on NaNo!' gifts last week, because she wasn't at school most of last week.
Well, that was the beginning of last week. I printed off my novel and am in the middle of reading it for the first time. I have like 7 other people who are waiting to read it. I'm trying to make it smaller by making it a smaller font, but I've only gotten it down to 58 1/2 pages. Oh, well. It was 98 pages in 11-point Arial Narrow, which takes up about half the space of 12-point Times New Roman. I shrunk it to 8-point and made a few other format changes.
Lunchtime!
MistWeaver
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