The Whole Watermelon

I just have to take this opportunity to shout to the world that I have WON NaNoWriMo! Yeah! Yippee! Hooray!

It was such an exciting moment when my husband and I verified our word count on the NaNoWriMo web site at the same time, and this came up on our screens:



I cannot explain how amazing this experience has been. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Seriously. Next year, do it. I didn't think I would be able to pull it off, and honestly I'm still a little amazed that I did. I am not ashamed to say that I am proud of myself for completing this.

I have decided that I will take a week and ignore my novel. I'm not going to open it read it or anything. I want to read it straight through, mistakes and all, after I've distanced myself from it for awhile. I have no idea what it's going to be like. I haven't had time to read through it, and I'm curious what it'll be like to read through it start to finish. After I've done that, I'll do a little housekeeping and clean it up a little bit before I will release it to the world. My plan is let anyone who is brave enough to read through my rough first draft be able to do so by Christmas. That will be my present to all three of loyal blog readers.

Here's another excerpt to tide you over until then:

(disclaimer: very rough first draft)

. . . . . . . . .

Chapter One

Lexi felt the despair she had been trying to fight all day wash over her. She felt the need to sit, and found the curb beside her car. Desperately seeking something to distract herself, she focused on the problem she had been thinking about on the way to her car. “for i=1 to 100 do... for i=1 to 100 do” she repeated in her head a dozen times. She felt herself calming, and although she still didn't trust herself to think about anything else, she moved on to what the next line of code should be. She didn't get much further than that when a new shadow appeared at her feet.

She turned around to find a pair of wide blue eyes looking concerned down at her. “Sheesh.. is that your car?” the mouth below the eyes asked.

She forced her lips into a half smile. “Yeah,” she replied

“Dude, of all the tires to slash in this lot, why pick the beetle? That thing is awesome.”

Lexi looked over with a sigh at the 1977 beetle her parents had just gifted her. Even with four slashed tires, he was right. It was a thing of beauty.

“I'm Everett, by the way. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“Hi. I'm Alexis – Lexi. ” she replied, then focused her mind to the car problem. “No thanks on the ride. I have AAA. I'll just have it towed to the tire shop.” As proof, she reached into her purse and pulled out her AAA card. This time she managed a full smile. Everett returned her smile, revealing two slight dimples under his cheekbones. He sat down next to her as she arranged for a tow truck to come.

“They said it'll be here within an hour” she relayed after the phone call ended. Everett looked at her for a moment than said “Tell you what, I'm done with all my classes. I'll help you wait for the tow truck, and then I'll give you a ride in my car. It'll be a lot more comfortable than the cab of a tow truck”.

Lexi felt the draw of the blue eyes, but her mother's voice in her head was louder. “No, thanks,” she answered, “you don't need to do that. Really, I'll be fine”.

Everett was quiet for a moment with his brows crinkled. “I know this sounds ridiculous, since I'm don't know you, and you don't know me, but I just feel uncomfortable leaving you alone with slashed tires and some unknown tow truck driver driving you around.”

Lexi debated whether to act annoyed or flattered by his chivalry. In the end her nerves took over and she let out a few giggles. As she strove to control those, she found her giggles turn gradually into deeper and fuller laughs until finally she fell backwards into the grassy median to release several full belly ones.

Everett looked down at her with a confused smile, and as her laughter turned into sighs, she elevated herself up onto her elbows. “I am so sorry,” she explained, with a smile still on her face, “I have had one crazy day, and I guess my body needed to release some tension. Tell you what,” she continued, “I'll let you drive me, but I'm going to text my mother your license plates number, so if I come up missing, she'll know where to look.”

As they waited for the tow truck, Lexi tried to find out as much about Everett as she could. Not only was she interested in what he was doing at the 'U, but she was unsure what exactly she was going to reveal about herself. She so badly wanted to fit in here, and to play the part of a normal freshman college student on her first day of classes. Unfortunately, she was anything but normal, and she knew that the longer she waited to tell the truth, the more awkward it would be to bring it up.

Everett concluded his story about how he had started as an English major two years ago, found himself taking more and more computer science courses as electives, and finally deciding to switch his major to computer science with a minor in English, despite the fact that it would add at least one extra year to get his degree.

“So, how about you?” he asked, “What brought you to north-east side of campus?”

”Well... I guess the first thing you should know is that... “ Lexi took a deep breath and felt her brain groan as she released the words, “I'm only sixteen years old.” She could see the shock first register in Everett's eyes and then quickly move to the rest of his features.

“No way, you're kidding, right? You totally don't look sixteen”

“I know”, she replied, “I get that a lot.” Unsure of what else to say she added “How old are you?” She did some quick math in her head. Even though the math added up to it, his soft features and large bright eyes didn't match the number she guessed: “20?”

“Yep, I'm 20. So you're sixteen and in college. How exactly did that happen?”

I am happy to announce that I have completed half of my novel. That's right folks, over 25,000 words have been typed by my ten fingers (25,839 to be exact).

In case you're like me, and have no idea how long a 50,000 novel is, I'll try to give you a better way to visualize it. I'm typing my novel in OpenOffice (just like Microsoft Word except it's free). I am typing in a 12 point font, single spaced. I do add a line of space between my paragraphs. I'll probably change that later to make it more book-like, but I like it for now. Right now I am about halfway through page 51. So, my novel will probably be about one hundred 8 and 1/2 by 11 pages long when I'm done.

This is by far the longest thing I've ever written in my life. It generally takes me two hours of typing every night to hit my daily goal. If I get distracted or fall asleep it takes me longer. Mike and I also take turns having writing nights where we get out of the house and write. We even had a date night writing night.

I am having so much fun with my novel. I had no idea I'd be having such a good time. I especially like that there's no expectation for it to be good. The only goal is to hit 50,000 words. If you do that you win.

In celebration of my half way mark, I'm going to post part of my novel. It's not my favorite scene in the novel, but I think I'll save that for those of you who are brave enough to read it when I'm done. And I think I will post my entire novel, although I'll probably take a week or so to clean it up a little. (the majority of the novel I've not had a chance to even re-read).

So here it is, a glimpse of my novel, but keep in mind that it's unfinished first draft.

.................

Lexi knew that she should get back to her work. She looked at Everett while she debated in her mind, and he flashed her a smile complete with dimples. She was putty in his hands. Of course she'd go. That's not what she said though. What she said was, “Well, I guess my program can wait another few minutes. I'm intrigued. What more could possibly be hidden in this building?”

As the entered the hallway Everett said, “Not hidden inside the building. Hidden on top.” And with that he opened the stairwell door and they climbed the stairs two levels up to the door leading outside.

The Computer Science building was built into the side of a hill. The top of the building was level with the top of the hill. The building was a shaped like a 'U' with a courtyard in the middle of the lower level. Sidewalks ran up the hill connecting the courtyard at the bottom of the hill with the parking lot at the top. They had exited the building at the top of the hill by the parking lot.

There was about 10 feet difference between the top of the hill and the top of the building. By climbing on a hand rail and jumping a little, it was a fairly easy to climb on top of the building. Everett went first, showing the way, and Zach encouraged Lexi to go next. Lexi took a little longer than Everett, but made her way up.

There were two things that Lexi noticed when she stood up after climbing onto the roof. One was that the view was incredible. There were no buildings, trees, or lights standing in her way. She had a perfect view of the city. There was a cool breeze blowing, and the night felt fresh and inviting. All of the twinkling lights below seemed magical in the quiet night air.

The second thing she noticed was that there was a couch on the roof.

“Um, did you guys put this up here?” she asked.

“Nope,” Everett answered, “I noticed it one day when I was walking to class. It's hardly visible from the ground. You have to look up at the roof at just the right angle to see it. Once I saw it I had to get up here and explore. I've never seen anyone up here, but it's a nice place to come and relax when I need a break from the programming.”

“Well the couch seems to be in pretty good shape, considering it's outside, so it couldn't have been up here too long.” Lexi said.

Everett sat down on the couch, and having learned her lesson from lunch the other day, Lexi quickly sat down next to him in the middle spot. Zach sat down on the other side of her, and they all looked out in silence at the city below. Lexi wanted nothing more than to snuggle up to Everett, and imagined his arm wrapping around her and pulling her close. Since that didn't seem likely to happen, she brought her knees up instead, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on top. She sat that way, snuggling herself with Everett close by, and felt content.

I know I've left everyone hanging about how our Michigan trip ended. I'll spoil the ending by saying that we all made it home in one piece. I promise I'll get to the rest of the details in about a month.

"Why so long?" you ask. Well, it just so happens that I have started writing a novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Basically, in the month of November anyone can try and write a 50,000 word piece of fiction. If you hit 50,000 words by the end of the month you win.

I really wanted to do it last year, but with a newborn it just didn't seem possible. Now that all of my kids are (mostly) sleeping through the night I thought I'd give it a go. I don't want to give too much away, but my novel is a lot like Twilight. Except instead of vampires, there are computer science geeks. It really is just a self indulgent way for me to re-live my favorite college memories. Except I can make them even better. Like including a Bud Cort look alike for my leading man.




I am having so much fun writing this. It may not amount to much, but I'm glad I've decided to do it. If it doesn't stink too bad, maybe, just maybe, I'll let you read it when it's done.

Here's a little gadget to show you how far I am in my writing.