NaNoWriMo 2015
*Under the line is an excerpt from the book I just finished.
** I have a book cover! Below is the cover designed by
I finished my novel.
Yep, I wrote 50,000 words (50,298 to be exact) over the course of one month: November 1st to the 30th.
It's a writing challenge called NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month. This is my second year that I participated in, and since last year I dropped out at 31K I'm pretty happy I finished this year.
While I'm proud of this accomplishment, I sort of hate telling people about it. Their immediate next question is, "when can I read it?" to which I reply, "probably never". Because let's be honest, it's a first draft. My finished book will probably look nothing like its current state, and I'm okay with that.
Until next time...
Mia
I didn’t know him before it all. I mean, I knew he existed the way you know two lefts and a right are the directions to your house in the cul-de-sac, or how the ice cream is in the tall, extra cold freezer at the end of the 12th isle, peanut butter cup third one down from the left.
He was snotty kid, my mom had told me before, so he was labelled as such in my head. Snotty Kid. Always red-nosed and panting in his snow suit, throwing snowballs at passing cars with the other children on the street.
I remember when he knocked on my door.
We were the only two left.
I glance up at the clock. 3:13 am. I rub the sleepiness from my eyes and get up, stretching. I whip my head around towards the door when I hear the knocking, my pony tail end stinging my eyeball on contact. That’s what must have woken me up. I walk slowly to the front door and stand on my tip-toes to look out the peep hole. A small child, a boy maybe, stands there, blanket in hand, pausing in between knocks. He reaches his fist up again and knocks, two soft meetings of knuckle and wood. I jump slightly. It feels so loud, to be breathing on this side of the door as he breathes on the other, knocking. Waiting for me to open the door.
I know he knows I’m here. My sick mother, his mother, him, and me. That’s all that’s left of our neighborhood, others are either dead here or dead somewhere else. It seems everyone just dies.
I’ll probably die.
After what seems like minutes of this, me breathing on one side, him on the other, I open the door. His eyes blink twice before they focus on my face. His eyes are red rimmed, puffy, dark.
I know before he opens his mouth.
It’s the same, every time someone tells you someone special has died. They try to hide it, the emotions, but our eyes are so bad at hiding pain like grief. It’s the obvious kind of pain, open to the air like your skin, exposed so the world can see it. Pain like that I’ve come to recognize from a mile away. The gravity of the world is suddenly apparent and your shoulders droop, trying to huddle in and touching front of your concave chest. Your lids and bags hang heavy from your eye sockets, grief dragging them down like boulders in the sea.
I didn’t have to hear Jake to know what he was going to say.