NaNoWriMo 2010

ShadScy said:

Is it too late to start a NaNo?

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Harlequin said:

It's only too late on November 30 at 11:59 PM, but you have to write fifty thousand words in nine days. If you want to attempt it, by all means go for it! I think it was Negrek last year who did 40k in four days, but I'm not sure.

Minish managed 20k in ... two days? last year, too. IT'S DOABLE. GO FOR IT.

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The bus was already chundering slowly along the road by the time Ana turned the corner to the bus stop, but it was far enough away that she no longer had to run like her life depended on it in order to catch it. Some of the other, younger and less used to Ana's insane dash for the bus every morning, looked at her in the good old 'what the hell are you doing, you freak' manner, but only Mona actually turned and openly laughed at her at she came closer.

“Good morning! You're almost just about bouncing when you run now, you know? You'll be hitting yourself in the face in no time,” Mona said, a cheerfully wicked grin on her face. Ana rolled her eyes. Mona was the kind of girl who was absolutely obsessed with her friend's chests and their growing rates; while it was unlikely that there was any character archetype for this, if there was, she would be textbook. If female. Puberty had been annoyingly kind to her, too; she was small and skinny and was only just beginning to curve, but it was pretty clear that at least ninety per cent of what she ate went straight to her breasts. (Ana thought that they probably would even taste like Minstrels and blue Doritos. Assuming that was the path you decided to bravely venture on.) Her hair was dyed dark red, usually twisted at the back of her head with a series of obnoxiously coloured and or equally obnoxiously accessorised clips and clasps, and her eyes were hazel, but the boobs definitely were her defining feature.

“Hilarious,” Ana replied, rolling her eyes and placing her head dramatically over the centre of her chest. Well, it was probably the centre of her chest. Who knew. “Whatever will I do without my delicious flat chest?!”

“Be sexy to a wider demographic than just guilty paedophiles, probably.” Mona nodded sagely at this and turned as the thick sound of the bus began meandering closer, hoisting her bag higher up on her shoulder. “You're just on time, too. Even though I'm pretty sure this is the slowest bus in Scotland, but whatever, you miss it at least twice a week. It's an achievement for you.”

The bus stopped with a squeak and a loud hiss as the doors banged open, and a soft tilting whimper as schoolchildren began to cruelly step as heavily as possible onto it in the hope that it would actually break down today. (It never had, unsurprisingly. It seemed that worryingly unstable buses were actually the safest ones of them all when it came to practical experience on the road.) Ana and Mona hung back until the first crowd of midgets had left, simply because it was much easier to get on the bus without being ritually abused by children who had only been allowed to go to school without their parents for about two weeks. 'Ritual abuse' meaning 'being hit with bags that were larger than the person who owned them', the unusual choice of weapon for small people who almost certainly didn't need the extra holding space.

“They get slower and more obnoxious every time,” Ana sighed as her and Mona finally advanced on the doors. “They should just be shot on the first day back, it would be much easier for everyone. Oh, did you hear from Vix yet?”

Mona shook her head, making a rather irritable face as she plonked herself on the nearest available two-seaters, Ana following and sitting next to her. “Nope. I'd be surprised if she's in school today, to be honest. You can't just get caught cutting yourself in the toilets by a teacher and not expect to have to like, go to counselling or whatever.”

Vix, or rather 'Vixen' (an incredibly unfortunate name bestowed on her by her very... uh, distracted parents and that she hated with a passion), was the kind of girl who had a flair for the dramatics even more than Ana did. Nobody was really entirely sure why exactly she had started cutting herself, but it had made a very eventful first couple of weeks back at school. Well, her friends, Mona and Ana included, had a pretty good idea of who had triggered it, but everyone else just assumed that it was attention-seeking.

They supposed it might also be a little bit of that, considering after the first ten thousand times Vix and Darren had broken up (usually messily and often over Facebook, with much melodramatic texting of confused friends and status updating involved) their friend group had sort of given up on genuine sympathy, but they couldn't really be blamed for that, surely? You could only tell someone that their ex boyfriend was a total douche and that he didn't deserve her so many times before it got both old and very strained to keep up the façade if she kept breaking up and getting back together with the same fucking douchebag. It was far easier to insist that someone they barely knew was a douchebag, too; after Darren had started hanging around with them more, due to his status as Vix's occasional boyfriend, they'd found that other than his wandering eye he was actually kind of all right. Very annoying.

“Well, if she is, then at least today won't be boring, hm?” Ana said, snickering and sitting up so she could rest her knees on the seat in front of her. “Or at least, Maths definitely won't be. If we paid any less attention, I think Masterson would probably chuck us out the windows.”

“Let him try, old man that he is,” Mona snorted, glancing out of the window as the bus pushed itself to start moving again. “He'll probably give himself a heart attack or something doing that. Besides, I'm pretty sure Vix is planning on failing Maths regardless of whether she's passing angry notes through the classes or not.”

Well, that was a fair point. Ana shrugged. “Suppose. It's a shame though, seeing as she could probably pass it easily if she actually gave a fuck.” A double shame, seeing as Ana was actually pretty good at maths and didn't understand the sheer volume of people who insisted that it was the worst subject ever. Mind you, these same people also seemed to have issues with basic reading and writing as well (it was a small mercy when somebody who could actually read semi fluently was forced to read parts from whatever Shakespeare play they were doing this time, otherwise they would be reading it for about half the year; instead, they were merely subject to the English teacher slowly going mad for fifty minutes a day as half the words were mispronounced), so perhaps it was to be expected.

“Hm,” Mona nodded, slightly distracted by something. “I hope she does come in, though, because an interesting day is better than nothing, even if it's shitty interesting, you know...?”

“... Did you just rub your boob?”

Mona looked at her like she'd grown another head, even though it was totally obvious. “Uh... no?”

“You did!” Ana insisted. Seriously! You couldn't just do a bit of casual groping of yourself – especially when you were Mona, let's face it, that shit would be found out no matter how you tried to hide it – and expect to get away with it. Especially on the school bus. Seriously, what the hell?

“I did not!”

“You did! What, is it a magic fuckin' lamp or something?!”

After a couple of seconds they both started laughing, a wordless agreement of how utterly ridiculous that prospect was.

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Leafpool said:

ooh oooh I wanna try! muttered, murmured, whispered, gasped, yelled, retorted, snapped, asked, answered, called, spat, shrieked, screeched, breathed. 8D there.

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