NaNoWriMo 2009

[#1 bro]

I hit 5000 words just now, which is nice because I'm halfway to where I need to be. It's 4:00, so there are still about eight hours until I go to bed, and it's not like I have anything to do. Maybe, just maybe, I could catch myself up completely today. If not, I'm not doing anything tomorrow either.

I'm actually enjoying writing this story a lot, which in the end, is really what matters. I'm kind of about to write a very pivotal scene at this moment, which is both exciting and very hard. It also requires a lot of description. So... yeah.

By the way, the very first line of dialogue in my story came about... I don't know, 4800 words in. Although if everything goes as planned, the latter half of my novel will be like, all dialogue, making up for it. Should be fun.

Right now, I'm actually considering going back and fixing up the 5000 words or so I have. And yeah, I know, "NaNo is a time for writing AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. Edit in December." But to me, editing is really more of a break from writing than anything else could ever be. So when I next get writers block, I feel like that's what I'm going to do.

 

[Zora of Termina]

~7900 words so far. I'ma spend the weekend playing catchup to the daily goals.

Before I had a chance to react, Jesse and Hera had burst trough the door. I kinda wondered where Aunt Jackie was since she promised she would show up, but then she might’ve been called out on business. After all, vacations for working people generally didn’t start until tomorrow.

I finally get a chance to say something. “Hi, gu-“ I was interrupted as Opal shoved past. She was here and Jesse was here. Hilarity would ensue.

Man, I just wasn’t getting a chance to talk. Now Darkness’s boyfriend and Rhythm’s brother pushed past… now Marshall… Rayne and Mist… Sarah… I was about to shout something to the effect of “For fuck’s sake just let me talk stop walking past me”.

At least everyone was showing up.

This particular quote is one I've just written, from a memory of a Christmas party.
Decided to title the novel "More Than A Memory".

 

[#1 bro]

Now at 6000 words and finished the pivotal scene. I'm trying to finish the first "movement", so to speak, of the novel by 10,000 words but I don't know if I'll quite make it.

Aforementioned pivotal scene is here, or at least the first part. In order to understand this, I must tell you that the novel is from the perspective of Panda Bear, who is a snake in a cage in a biology lab.

Panda Bear decided to watch the Weird Snails for a bit longer. Ever since he had his epiphany about the Human Beings in the Second World, he had cared about the Weird Snails even less than he had before. And yet, now he was watching them. An abnormal amount had gathered around a rock closer to the top of the murky blue cage. It was probably not for any special reason. Panda Bear wished he could do things for no special reason. But yet, his cage had exhausted all its-

The sky had completely opened up, and the light was blinding. Out of nowhere, the top of the entire First World had came off, and it was like nothing that had ever happened before. The black that had always been there before was replaced by images, moving images, and then, something touched Panda Bear's body. Was it his own body? No, it was encircling him, wrapping around him, flesh meeting scales. Against him, it felt like nothing he had ever felt. It was too rough, too alien, too... Human.

And it scooped him up, and carried him out. And now he was in the air, flying, absolutely paralyzed with terror. He saw his entire world below him, distant, tiny. And now he looked around him, and he was in the Second World. He was in the world directly parallel to his own, and he was seeing a perspective he had never seen before, inside a dimension he wasn't even aware existed. Nothing about this made any sense, and it was just like a weird, druggy, trippy dream, completely out of the norm, completely beyond the scope of anything that had ever happened. And then it occurred to him what had happened. He had escaped. He was in a different world. The Second World, to be exact, and it was like some kind of fucking heaven, but one that he could barely see with his beady eyes. He was being flung around and around, and the lights were so bright, and he was sick. And it was like some kind of approximation of the Second World, enough to be classified as the Fourth World? He didn't know. But he had escaped, and he had no clue how it had happened.

It was strange, and so many thoughts were rushing through his head now as he barely even had the presence of mind to see anything at the moment. He had always envisioned himself escaping by his own power, somehow finding a way to break free of the chains that held him in, but this was it. He was in the hands of some sort of alien creature, in the Second World, some invisible force was maneuvering him, and oh my god. It was a Human Being. A Human Being, which somehow the Corn Snake had never really thought of being any bigger than himself or the Weird Shrimp that he saw floating around in their cage, had taken Panda Bear in his hands and somehow, somehow magically moved him out of his own little private world, into the Second World which was so big. There were so many humans, SO MANY, all around, and while the Corn Snake had never thought of them as an enemy until now, he was at the moment terrified out of his tiny little snake brain. Nothing was how he had expected it to be, and everything was changing.

His life would never be the same.

 

[Sandstone-Shadow]

The last time I counted, I was at 6226. I haven't counted up what I've written since then; I decided that I wanted to write my story longhand in this journal that I have. <3 At first I thought it would be a huge pain to have to count every word manually rather than use the computer's word count, but it's actually not so bad, and it's making me appreciate a bit more the amount that I'm writing. Plus it also means that I can write, "Chapter (whatever)" without having to obsess over the fact that those would be counted as words when I don't think they should count. xD

I'm hoping to write a lot this weekend and gain some lost ground.

He ducked quickly and pressed his arm into the snow; very quickly, the parasitic plants crumpled and turned brown; a firey pain burnt into his arm.

Dair felt leaves and vines brushing him; he whirled around, scooping up snow in his good hand and flinging it at the plants. They flinched back, and Dair did not hesitate to scramble to his feet and run.

He deliberately ran through patches of snow, not slowing down enough to check behind him. He ran until he was sobbing for breath, then finally he collapsed under the protection of a tree ringed with snow. He twisted so he could press his arm into the snow. The pain bit into his arm, and he realized he was trembling. As the plants shriveled and retreated, taking the pain with it, Dair curled around his stomach, pressed his face into his arms, and cried.

 

[nothing to see here]

El Garbanzo, I'm rather interested in reading your novel. If when it's done, I could, that would be very much appreciated.

Holy crap, someone actually wants to read my stuff!

I think I'll start uploading it somewhere, probably fanfiction.net, toward the end of November--I probably won't wait until it's completely done, because I doubt I'll be finished with every match (there will be 63 of them, plus maybe a "what happened after it was over" type thing) before the end of November even if I do make it past 50,000 by then.

I'll try to remember to PM you a link or something like that once it gets to that point.

 

[Blaziking the God General]

Holy crap, someone actually wants to read my stuff?

Hey, I want to read it too!!! :D

Heehee, listening to this is for some reason making me incredibly eager to write.

 

[#1 bro]

Great day on my end. I wrote 5000 words, and now I'm only one day behind schedule, which is really nice. (Well, technically two days, because it's after midnight over here, but sshhh.)

Tomorrow I'll aim for another 5000 word day, leaving me one day AHEAD of schedule if I succeed. Which will hopefully prepare me for probably another busy week of school where I do almost no writing. Blahhh.

But right now, I'm pretty happy with where this is going. My story is going somewhere, and it's decent so far, and most importantly, I'm having fun writing it.

Now, I'm going to go play Super Mario World. I'm done for today. :)

 

[nothing to see here]

Just went over 10,000... and I haven't come close to actually finishing Celes vs. Dedede yet (I've only got the pre-fight stuff done.)

It's kinda hard to believe that I'm already a fifth of the way done with this! Well, a fifth of the way done with November's chunk of it, anyway. It'll probably take a lot more than 50,000 words to finish the whole thing.

Shouldn't be too hard to get past 11,667 before tomorrow (or is it "today" now?) is over. The next match is Burger King vs. Super Macho Man, which shouldn't be a very long fight, so I could always go ahead and start on that one if Celes vs. Dedede doesn't quite push me over tomorrow's target wordcount.

EDIT: Oh, and since I don't have a quote this time... I'll reveal Chapter 5's title instead. It's "I Am Not a Penguin." Yeah, usually the chapter titles are some silly (or occasionally not-so-silly) thing relating to either the characters, some part of the fight, or both... the only match I haven't been able to come up with a decent title for so far is Rukia vs. Roxas.

 

[Lorem Ipsum]

11,868 words, 5 chapters, 22 pages. ~2000 words written today.

Nick Cooper stood in his house, looking out of the large patio windows that gave him an almost unbroken view down to the sea. He lived in Cornwall, strictly because of business, he had told his wife. That wasn’t strictly true though. Ever since he was a child, Nick had come down to Cornwall on holiday in the summer, and spent two joyous weeks on the county’s beaches. And since then, he had always been vying to move down there permanently, and find a job.

Nick was a teacher, and a good one at that. He had been nominated for numerous awards, and even won once upon a time. He taught at secondary schools up and down the country before settling in his beloved Cornwall and building upon his Masters’ degree and rising to the rank of head of Sciences. He was a physics teacher by trade, and was so because he had been gripped by the various theories and mathematical puzzles that physics produced. Ever since his first lesson when he was thirteen, he had come top of his class in that particular subject, and that hadn’t changed in the seventeen years since he had been in that classroom. He had left school at eighteen, with three A levels in hand: Latin, English Literature and (of course) Physics. Attaining a place at his local university, he read Particle Physics, and six years later, at the ripe age of twenty four, had qualified as a secondary teacher. From there he had climbed up the educational ladder, to reach the position he was in now at the age of thirty-six.

Nick wasn’t one of the teachers who worshipped every word a textbook had in it, and nor was he one who relied on presentation software on a computer. He much preferred to sit down on a table and explain a principle using different bits of equipment he had on his desk. Answering questions was still his favourite pastime though, and he would often let his lessons go off on a considerable tangent to answer questions students may have had about Physics in general. As a result, his students learned to love the subject, and learned to like him as a teacher. Which wasn’t an easy feat to achieve now, was it?

 

[EvilCrazyMonkey]

I have close to 6k right now. I really hope I catch up this weekend, because all I'm doing is a biology project. :(

Okay, but at least I started writing and got some more ideas. I have like 5k more to write to catch up.

EDIT: Okay, I just finished my third story and counted for 7000 words, which is a thousand more than I expected, so I am very happy right now. That means only 4k more to write to catch up (and with the daily ~1667).

 

[Karkat Vantas]

The next match is Burger King vs. Super Macho Man, which shouldn't be a very long fight.

Macho Man: When I'm done with you, nobody's gonna want to take your picture.
Burger King: Feel the wrath of my fattening burgers!
Macho Man: What is this horrible processed fast food crap?
Burger King: Actually, that's an explosive burger.
Macho Man: ...oh shi--
*explosion*
SUPER MACHO MAN DEFEATED

...just kidding, Macho Man is going to kill BK.

Could you post the scheduled fights?

 

[nothing to see here]

Could you post the scheduled fights?

Hmm... I actually hadn't thought of that.

I guess I could post Round 1's fights (though I'm not going to post any past that... because it would reveal who's going to win their matches in Round 1, and I'd rather keep people guessing up until the point when they actually read the thing.)

Some of these fights are going to turn out differently than most people might expect, of course... but if anyone wants to try and guess what happens, go ahead! Also remember that death isn't the only way to lose a match; you also lose if you stay unconscious too long, get thrown/knocked/fall outside of the arena, give up, or are completely incapable of fighting anymore for whatever reason.

Matches 1-16 are the left side of the bracket, and the overall winner of that side faces the overall winner of the right side of the bracket (matches 17-32) in the final match.

1: Lexaeus vs. Cloud Strife
2: Rukia Kuchiki vs. Roxas
3: Aragorn vs. Lord Voldemort
4: Vivi Ornitier vs. Wario
5: Celes Chere vs. King Dedede
6: Burger King vs. Super Macho Man
7: Mewtwo vs. Wolverine
8: Riku vs. Terminator
9: Ness vs. Frankenstein's Monster
10: Scar vs. Dot Warner
11: Quina Quen vs. Kirby
12: Zack Fair vs. Optimus Prime
13: Nightcrawler vs. Joker
14: Indiana Jones vs. Ganondorf
15: Yakko Warner vs. Big Bad Wolf
16: Dordonii Alessandro del Socacchio vs. Puss in Boots
17: Michael Jackson vs. Zorro
18: Ike vs. Aaroniero Arruruerie
19: Sora vs. Wakko Warner
20: Mario vs. Cait Sith
21: Naruto Uzumaki vs. Dracula
22: The Black Knight vs. Emperor Palpatine
23: Turanga Leela vs. Sonic the Hedgehog
24: Batman vs. Meowth
25: Meta Knight vs. Son Goku
26: Kuja vs. Fa Mulan
27: Yoshi vs. Xaldin
28: Strago Magus vs. Ichigo Kurosaki
29: Lucas vs. Geno
30: Demyx vs. The Tick
31: Terra Branford vs. Dhalsim
32: Harry Potter vs. Link

 

[Karkat Vantas]

Huh.

Aside from Batman v. Meowth and Harry Potter v. Link, I have no idea who's going to win what.

Who won the first few matches?

 

[nothing to see here]

Huh.

Aside from Batman v. Meowth and Harry Potter v. Link, I have no idea who's going to win what.

Yeah, I tried to avoid having too many one-sided matches; I re-randomized the matches most of the time if I got one that was just completely unfair (like if a smashing-buildings-with-sheer-power type like Ichigo or Goku got matched up with an absolute wimp like Meowth.)

There were a handful that ended up pretty one-sided anyway, though... including one of the ones you mentioned.

Who won the first few matches?

Not telling! At least not until I start posting them somewhere, anyway.

Though I guess someone could probably guess who won Match 1, based on the excerpt of it that I posted a while back.

 

[#1 bro]

I am only 500 words away from my goal of 5K today. And I'm actually ahead of the daily goal right now, if you'd believe that. Life is good.

I just finished writing my first (possibly only) big fight scene, and for a while before that I thought I had reached a dead end. Fight scenes? Not my forte, at all. If I was writing El Garbanzo's novel, I think I'd kill myself. Fortunately, though, I really don't need to put any more than I want to for the entire rest of my novel. But this fight scene, I think it came out really well, and I actually had a lot of fun with it.

That scene pretty much wrapped up the first "movement", so to speak, of my novel. I'm at about 13,000 words, which is not optimal, I wish I could have finished it in a nice 10,000. But even if it's going slowly, the novel is moving alone nevertheless, and I'm having a great time with it.

Is anyone in the mood to read an excerpt? Well, no, of course not, but here you go anyway. It's of said fight scene, which is between two snakes in a cage.

Enraged, the Corn Snake took the sizable pebble clenched between his tiny jaws, and jabbed it into Funhouse Jack's massive wall of skin in front of him, as forcefully as he possibly could. Blood was drawn. "Damage to the enemy!" was the Weird Snail's eager comment.

But this only made it worse. Funhouse Jack's tiny beady eyes, mirroring Panda Bear's own, rose up from the ever-unwinding spiral. The head guided the body, staring the smaller snake down. Anger flashed within the blackness, and then Funhouse Jack was dragging its head, the body following faithfully behind it, right to where Panda Bear's tender top was inching along the pebbles, pushing his way to freedom. The bigger snake darted forward, its fangs bared in irrepressible anger at the tiny orange blur. Panda Bear slithered along like he had never slithered before. It felt like his scales were peeling off as they ripped through the broken glass, but that was a tiny little issue compared to what was attacking him right now.

Funhouse Jack's fangs plummeted through the air, following a trajectory set straight for the skull of Panda Bear where Sir Handsome was perched. As the terrible teeth swept through the air, ready to ravage and tear, Panda Bear flung himself in the other direction as fast as he could, thrashing his entire body about like a spastic epileptic beaver. Once more, it was like the glass was tearing his tail's skin to ribbons, but he was ever mercifully spared. Funhouse Jack's neck section violently landed on top of the Corn Snake's body, his failed attempt at attack lying him down perpendicular to his prey.

"Watch what you're doing with your body!!" roared the Weird Shrimp. "There are tiny little organisms in that other cage! You probably just crushed like fifty of them!"

Panda Bear was too busy for guilt.

 

[Blaziking the God General]

11: Quina Quen vs. Kirby
20: Mario vs. Cait Sith
22: The Black Knight vs. Emperor Palpatine
24: Batman vs. Meowth
25: Meta Knight vs. Son Goku
26: Kuja vs. Fa Mulan

I love this already.

 

[Flareth]

Oh gosh, Garbanzo, this will be awesome.

YOU HAVE TO POST THIS SOMEWHERE. :D I can't wait for the Animaniacs fights....it'll be hilarious.

 

[Counterstrike]

This is me. I think I started too late, but I want to go through with the 50k even if I go into December.

 

[nothing to see here]

Oddly, I seem to have run into some writer's block on Celes vs. Dedede. I know who I want to win, but I can't think of how to get to that point. I did finish the pre-fight stuff, though.

Instead, I went ahead and started writing Burger King vs. Super Macho Man. I've actually switched this fight with Celes vs. Dedede; so now BK vs. Macho Man is match 5, and Celes vs. Dedede is match 6. Which... doesn't actually change anything other than what numbered stones the fighters picked and which match happens first. Heh.

In a far corner of the underground chamber, a tall figure draped in royal clothing and topped by a golden crown stood, silent and motionless. His bearded face seemed to be permanently locked in a somewhat creepy grin, and no matter who walked past him or what sounds of battle could be heard from above, this expression never changed.

"Hey, what're you grinnin' about?"

The voice, coming from a squat bird-like creature in red robes, at first seemed to go unnoticed. After a second passed, however, the king turned toward the speaker and shrugged. Then, out of nowhere, he asked a question of his own.

"Are you hungry?"

The bird-creature blinked for a second, confused. He then smiled and answered.

"Hungry? I'm starvin'! What, you got food down here or somethin'?"

"Here," the king said, pulling one hand out from behind his back, "Try this. It's my new Enormous Omelette Sandwich."

A huge breakfast sandwich appeared out of thin air and floated downward several inches before resting in the man's hand. Though it was packed full of some of bacon, eggs, cheese, and more grease than a truckload of French fries, somehow the sandwich left no stains behind on his white gloves.

"Enormous sandwich, huh? Never had one o' those before... but hey, food's food."

The red-clothed bird snatched the sandwich, chowing down on it so quickly that it seemed like he didn't even take time to chew. Within a matter of seconds, the massive pile of bread and meat had been reduced to crumbs.

Yeah, before the fight starts, the Burger King gives his fellow King (Dedede) something to eat... because the cafeteria food they have in the underground chambers below the arena isn't so great.

Right now I'm done with the pre-fight stuff and I'm coming pretty close to finishing the fight itself, too. Release the bogus!

 

[Zora of Termina]

10012 words!!

He had held my hand the whole time we were there.

Now, I knew it was a dream around the point where they started singing the Cell Block Tango. But I had tried to wake up and couldn’t.

Can’t have been as terrifying as that experience I just had though. I finally remember that they were Heartless as I lay back down in my spot, trying to ignore the blood coming out of my forehead.

I cover it up with a blanket and try to get back to sleep.

I feel proud of myself now. ^^ *works to get caught up to the daily goals*