A short break from the “novella” I am making. It turns out writing one takes months for me to do so, and I’m not even done yet. The German dude said something about “nanowrimo”, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, and according to him, it’s a challenge to write a book containing 50000 words during the month of November. He imparted this to me and my friend (yes, I introduced him to Layla) a little around the end of October, just when I was finishing the first chapter of English Affair.
Me: “Do you get paid for that? I’ve been writing something and I’m at 10k words already.”
Him: “Who would pay you for that? 😂 It’s just a challenge.”
Me: “Ooooh. Alright, I think I’ll be able to accomplish it.”
My arse. With my sloven nature, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to finish what I began. I really want to because I’ve already written so much, and while it stays undone as time goes by, the happenings in my life pile up and I can’t seem to write any of them when in my mind, I have an unfinished task.
I started writing this a few days after I met the English guy, which was in September, and it’s January now. So much for the "November" challenge. It seemed so easy to think I could do it in one month because it should be. For heaven’s sake, I don’t have to think of a plot for this nor come up with lines for a conversation because this literally happened to me in real life. A lot of the dialogues are already there in our chatbox both in text and audio. Unfortunately for me, I get so bored and tired quickly and need an incredibly long time to take a break. Although, to be fair, you have to give me props for the almost word-for-word transcription of our voice recordings. I displayed signs of a hard-worker doing that, in my opinion. But I think I did it too much... I feel like I should omit some of the unnecessary conversations, although honestly, the reason why I'm including them is to make the story longer to attain the 50k words. I'm still roughly at 30k but even so, I’ve already invested so much in this so no.. I won’t leave it unfinished. This is a challenge I’m setting for myself even if it's not much of a book at all. Once I publish all of the chapters here, only then I’ll do a thorough polishing and maybe turn it into an actual novel and less of a journal, which means I have to look at it through the eyes of a fresh reader who hasn’t read any of my entries.
I was actually just reading the latest chapter again and I feel like I should remove the sex scenes. Haha. Some of them are really cringe-worthy, gotta admit that. But it's probably just how I deliver it and my use of words so I'd probably just edit them. I legit had to read a classic erotic novel for that, which is probably my mistake because it's the 21st century so I should find inspiration from the likes of 50 Shades of Grey—instead of something from the Victorian era. But I don't know. I have a prejudiced view of 50 Shades of Grey and did try reading it when I was a teen because Layla was obsessed with it and insisted I should give it a try, but, err… It just really didn't pique my interest. Not now. Nor ever.
Aside from the erotic novel, I was also reading another classic in between to pick up some new words I want to use. All of that is to sharpen my vocabulary so this won’t all be a waste of time entirely. A new word and its definition doesn't really retain much in my head unless I use it, so voilà. Anyway, the point is finishing a story has always been an issue for me ever since I began writing in High School. There was actually this one fanfiction I wrote when I was about 13 years old and in my frustration of not having finished a single story out of all the bunch I’ve commenced, I made all of the characters kill each other and that was “the end” of it. My sister and cousin, who were some of my avid readers back then, still bring up the horrifc unpredictable ending sometimes.
I mentioned in 2021 I was going to finish the novel I started the year before that (2020), and it's already 2023 now and I haven't even finished Chapter 1 yet. Yes, I am that awful. It was the one that was inspired by my history with Chace, if you still remember.
Speaking of Chace…
About the book I was reading in between to pick up some new words (the classic by Honoré de Balzac, not the erotic one), it was to my utter delight that the heroine shares the same name I have. Well, a nickname, anyway, to be precise. But, guess what? One of her lovers also shares Chace's name and it was absolutely amusing when I got to that part. And Chace in the book is from Paris, too! It was all too funny, reading both of our names in the same paragraph bearing descriptions of amorous sentiments… It was like I was reading our past or another version of our story in an alternate universe.
They didn't end up together.