Metafictional

Copulsky:

This story is not going anywhere. The number of writers is dwindling. And the characters and dying off. We're never going to get to the explosion. We're never going to get to the end. We're never going to have enough words. It's We've been going for six hours. How many more can we go? I need sleep. I have an essay to write tomorrow. Six of us still here. How many people who are writing across the web are still writing? How many words do we have? 20 thousand? Maybe? 25,000? Is Valerie writing prolifically? Has she written anything at all? Is Noah still going? Is he sleeping tonight? Are there people working who having posted anything? Are there people writing who haven't told us they were going to participate? Is Fred going to participate?

Can we call it a novel if we don't hit 50,000 words? Is it possible to write 50,000 words?

Maybe an explosion doesn't happen? Maybe it's an emotional explosion? Can we make the novel more about the process of trying to write a novel in one night rather than about the plot itself?

Sarah's sipping Soda, Harry's over there. Kat's reading the wiki. Marlon's doing something. Is Will still working on the wiki?

More people said they were going to show up than did. That was disappointed. Rough start.

I think we should have picked something that demanded less plotting. Something more experimental, I think, would have been easier for people to jump in and out of. I feel like people feel too compelled to write a whole character, a whole day. People don't want to get involved because it's too big of a commitment. It's too hard to slip into.

Is going met fictional a fix?

We're constructing on a wiki. I've tried this twice before. It's working better this time. Now we have more people with more commitment. The first time the novel just had no focus. So people added a few unrelated things and then just lost interest. The second time I started with a bunch and some plot, but only one person really joined in, and then he lost interest, and then I lost interest. We must already have more words than either of those did.

If we don't hit 50,000 tonight, will we come back to it and finish? Another all nighter? Open invitation for people to add to it across the internet? Is there any chance people would actually keep working on it, occasionally adding more to it.

"I think someone should do something surprising," I'm saying to the room, "to fulfill the surprises I promised on the advertising."

Harry and I are talking about sweet make-outs. Can we keep writing this while we are making out. Would Kat being angry if we were making out.

And "who wrote Chester Masters?"

“It’s so creepy.” Sarah’s saying, “I shouldn’t say that. I take it back.”

Even now I don’t know where I’m going. The point was to find a kind of writing where I could just keep going and going, but then I lost my train of thought. I couldn’t figure out what to say. Maybe I’m just tired, because it’s the middle of the night and I’ve been writing for seven hours.

Kat’s not working on the novel anymore. She’s doing something else. I wish people were working harder and more seriously. The mood’s wrong. We need something that’s easier to take less seriously and go wild with. We need something different.

This was a bad concept for a novel. I’ve said this already. What I’m saying is going in circles.

We’re in the formal lounge. “All right,” Sarah says, putting a cup down on the table. Kat and I are in the middle of the room on a couch. Sarah and Harry are in front of us. Wills off to the left. Marlon’s behind us. Harry’s playing music. It’s kind of epic, but not really. He has a weird disk-like speaker thing, sitting on the floor in front of his chair.

I think we need to do something fun and exciting to change the pace a bit. I don’t know what. I feel like it’s hard to get the energy to do something to get the energy up.

I don’t know how things are going. I wish I’d convinced just one dozen of our friends to do this. The room seems split between people I’m friends with and people a feel a little socially awkward with. There might have been a different way to do this.

As the founder of this, can I be a God character? Can I rewrite what other people are doing? Are people going to hate the effect what I’m doing has on this piece? Am I ever going to get to the explosion? Am I ever going to get to breaking up with Michael. Am I ever going to get to explicit sex scenes with the cute girl from French class. I feel like were trapped in the badly over-plotted nature of trying to break down a story by hours. I feel like it’s the perfect metaphor for the struggle of bad writing. If we edit this shit tons after we’re done, maybe something decent can come out of it.

Maybe we can make a great book, and we can sell it, and we can become famous. Maybe it just needs the right thing. If I can make this part sound better, and blend it in better throughout everything else. Maybe things need to be weirder. Maybe people need to die even more unrealistically and superfluously. Maybe we need to over exaggerate.

We’re at about 20,000 words. 15,000 up. Another 5,000 me and Kat haven’t posted. We’re calling it 25,000. We’re pretending there’s a lot other people have written that they haven’t put up. Maybe there’s even more. Who knows? Maybe we’re at 35,000. How productive have Noah and C.J. and Valerie been?

Me and Harry, having in-character conversations via instant messages. Me and Kat passing the computer back and forth.

The aim conversation technique works well. What if we could be doing more of that. It takes time to re-transcribe it into the text of a document. It has the added benefit of being in our text twice.

I think I should be saying something more interesting. Breaking the fourth wall to just be a boring? This is the worse meta-fictionality ever. I’m a horrible, horrible writer.

I want to get to the sex scene. That would be fun and easier. I’m still breaking up with Harry. Totally boring.

A bunch of kids, old Infoshop alumns—came in. The novel is too structured for them to participate in. They are making a cut-up. A cover. I hope it is good. They are cutting up articles on the meaning of religion. Mike Nash is talking. Chris Grace laying on the couch, reading. Vlad and Rory and Leila.

If everyone had been as productive as me, already, we’d been there.

I’m right at the moment of the assembly. And there’s nothing to actually write about the actual assembly. Me and Harry have agreed what happens later. I don’t want to plot it any more, moment to moment. I want to write something about sex with the cute girl from French class. I want my character to be able to do that without it being mean and weird and out of character.

4:20. The cleaning staff asked us to step out for a little bit so they could clean it. They were apologetic. We were apologetic. Lots of food let over. Giving away as much pizza as we could, we have too much left. Three some pizza left, of the ten we started with. And lots of soda. And chips. And candy barely touched.

I think this metafictional layer is fucked. I should get back to work.

If the characters die, do they go to heaven? If we are the Gods of our character, do our dead character end up up here with us? Is there a heaven in the book? Does our world have a theology? Should I decide and let everyone know? Should I write one of the character’s stories after they go to heaven? What would heaven be like? Sex fantasies?

I am tired. It is late. How many words are we at? Could we be anywhere near forty thousand yet? Is there something easy to write that I could just pound out another five thousand on in the next three hours. Would that bring us up to enough? When am I going to go sleep. In just enough time to get a bit of rest before we get up and drive to Kat’s house for the party.

Harry is going to bed. Because he is exhausted. Is that going to destroy our chances of reaching the end? I can’t go on, I won’t go on, I must go on. Five a.m., feels like six.

Harry just left. I hugged him. “I’m sorry I broke up with you” I said. He left, but he left his crayon-shaped coffee thermos. So I took it and caught him outside the building and give it to him. “Thanks” he said. “Yeah,” I said, “goodnight.” Before he left we talked about our chances of finishing the novel. He said we couldn’t do it tonight. Even if we’re at thirty thousand words, he said, it’s been way too long. It’s too late. I’m holding out hope that there’s more hiding on people’s computer than we quite realize. Just Marlon might have a bunch he hasn’t put online. Kat’s writing again, maybe she has more. Maybe Valeria will come through. Maybe Noah will write some more. No. Probably not. Maybe someone else, somewhere, is writing. Maybe Valerie. I’ll put my hopes on her. Maybe her and her friend haven’t posted anything they’ve been writing, but maybe they’ve just been plowing along. Maybe they’ve written ten thousand words. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t know if I can convince myself. Harry leaves, and on the way out he says that though we’re not finishing it now, he thinks we will finish it tomorrow. He says tomorrow night he will do it instead of his homework. That is not exactly as it happened. When I write it that way, it makes it sound like he said more than he said, without prompting. There was some prompting. I said “Will we ever finish?” I said something like that. Some of my transcription of dialogue is just an estimate. My memory is not perfect. Unfortunately.

After I bring him his thermos, I come back wondering if there’s still any way. What if I can write five thousand, ten thousand words? What if I can just plow a whole lot out in the next three hours? When are we going to go to sleep? We could go rather soon? We could keep going until ten in the morning? Or 8? That is the time I put on the facebook information. Maybe 7, that is a round 12 hours then. Maybe we should leave in time to get enough sleep before leaving for the party tomorrow. Maybe that is barely possible anymore. Maybe it is not possible. It is probably possible. It probably just means leaving soon.

My hands never get tired when I am typing on the computer, but they are getting tired now, because I have typed nearly a page non-stop. Not nearly a page. Not quick nearly a page just yet. I am trying to just keep going and going. I am trying not to stop. I hope my hands don’t keep hurting. I hope that doesn’t get in the way. Maybe Will will start writing again. That could help us reach the number of words. We are at novella length now. But that it not the same. I want this even to be a success. Even though, in some ways, it is already not a success. I told the community council I thought a couple dozen people would show up. Not that many did. My hand hurts. I need to take a break. I need to keep going. When Beckett wrote those unending blocks of texts, that five-page sentence, how long did he take? How much did he write at once? How distant is his experience writing it from our experience reading it? Still a little bit from even one page, plus I have some double breaks in there. A little less than six hundred words. I should keep going until I get to a thousand. And then I should do it nine more times. If I pump out an extra ten thousand words, we will be so close. So, so close. Can I do that? Can I pump out that may words? That seems very hard. Even of just this thousand, I am only two thirds of the way there? Won’t I get bored of this? Am I am the verge of getting very very bored of this rambling.

I suggested an idea for this project, which was just “we are write about what’s happening, right now, right here.” We’d describe the other people in the room. What we were saying. Me pitching this idea. If it was boring, we’d tell someone to do something interesting. Write about telling them to do something interesting. Write about what they did. Review their success. It would be easier to just keep going. Because the process would be less imaginative. My cousin in trying to do nanowrimo, by writing long narratives about his life. It is boring to read, mostly. It is long and rambling, and says nothing interesting.

I hope to make this more interesting by making it, not so much about what I am saying, but about the significance of what I am saying. This is all about the quest to produce. To produce and produce and produce.

Kat carries her sleeping back across the room. “What are you doing?” I ask. “Going here” she says, sitting down on the other, little, couch. I ask again. I don’t remember exactly what I say, either time. Maybe I don’t quite ask again. No. I say “Going to sleep?” and she says “Maybe.” Maybe that’s what happened. She is in her sleeping bag now, on the other couch, maybe going to sleep. I saw a sweat shirt out of the corner of my eye and thought it was a cat. I thought I saw it move. Maybe it moves. Could the wind have moved it.

I am getting distracted. These is more I wanted to say about Kat. I don’t want her to go to sleep. Because then there would only be four of us here, in a way. If she is asleep—she just moves to the other other couch, which is bigger, I though she might be getting up and coming over to me, but I was wrong—then, no, I got it wrong, there would be only three of us here if she was asleep. Me, and Sarah, and Marlon. I like Kat’s company. I would feel alone without her. And what if Sarah goes to sleep too? What if it’s just me and Marlon awake. It feels too few. Then I’d feel bad leaving, but not really want to stay any more. How long will Marlon and Sarah stick it out? How long with they preserver? How productive are they being? Hopefully productive. I see the food out the corner of my eye, and think it is something else. Maybe I am getting pretty tired. Maybe I am seeing things.

A long time ago, I meant to calculate how much, based on words per minute, I could type in three hours. Somewhat arbitrarily, I would going to estimate I could type thirty words per minute, but I’m not really sure if that’s right, too high or too low, I do not know. I also should just the word count again. I think, I’ve very, very, pretty sure, that I’ve broken one thousand new words now. For the big go. Maybe fifteen hundred, but maybe that’s too high. Two thousand, I don’t think so. Maybe somewhere between, that would be nice. That might be too optimistic. I shouldn’t set myself up to be disappointed.

I meant to tell you about my hands. They stopped hurting a while ago. But I did not remember until my arm started hurting. My arm started hurting. It helps now that I’m sitting up, so it’s not bending in an unhealthy way. My posture and computer position has never been good. My laptop is on my lap, which I hear is not healthy. Probably not good for my arms, but I hear it is bad for my testicles. I head it will lower my sperm count. Trying to figure out how to spell testicles—I tried “testicals” first—distracted me for a moment. I meant to say it slowed me down. My arm is hurting and maybe I should take a break. I should also check my word count. I should maybe just take a break long enough to check my word count. Okay. I will do that. Right now.

Thirteen hundred, seventy five. That many words. I had gotten my hopes up for it being a little higher. But maybe that’s not that bad. I think it might be reasonable for me to try to write five thousand words of this, but maybe not ten thousand. This maybe took twenty minutes, maybe half and hour. Lets call it twenty. I think that might be a better guess. I think Kat might be asleep now. Remembering that makes me sad. Twenty thousand words. No. Twenty minutes. Thirteen hundred in twenty minutes. That is like four thousand in an hour. In three hours, that it twelve thousand. If twenty minutes is a correct estimate, and it might not be, and if I can keep this up, and I might not be able to, writing ten thousand more words might not be unreasonable. It will be so sad then, when we have right around 45,000. We will be so close to succeeding, but we will not quite succeed. That is going to make me sad. But I think it is almost inevitable that that is going to happen. Maybe Harry wrote a good little chunk of meta before he left. If I write this much meta, is it going to throw the balance off of everything, or could it somehow make the story perfect?

I think most readers aren’t as willing as me for stories to do odd things. I think I probably like Borges more than most people. And Barth. And Barhelme. I think I like the idea of a story that never really gets to the story. Like Barth. Like Lost in The Funhouse. Except that Barth is better than me. I have having an easier time just going and going than I thought I would. I keep forgetting things that I was going to talk about. I was going to talk about the pizza boxes. We ordered ten and now we only have three and some. I think I might have said this another time before. I just saved. That is a good thing to do. Shame if this was lost. Early Kat’s computer went off. But all we lost was one close-quote. She’d be saving all the time and the computer had autosaved it. It was scary for a moment and then okay. I got distracted from the pizza boxes. I was going to write about wanted to get up and take the couple steps over to them and see how much was in the top box, and maybe the other box, if people have been taking from both the cheese box and the pepperoni box, to see how much is really there, in the four boxes, if it is nearly four full boxes, or perhaps only a little over two now. I think it is probably towards the more.

I thought of adding this awhile ago, but it seems only to be possible for me to follow one train of thought at a time. I want to write about getting up and getting water and maybe going to the bathroom next. I am testing to see if what I was saying is true. If perhaps, in this, I can indeed follow more than one thing at once. Maybe, a little. But I want to get back to what I was saying. But I think perhaps now I have lost it. Or I have come back to it already, without fully realizing it as I did it. That I have now covered what I was going to say. I think my arms need a break.

I also wanted to say something about the experience of being where I am right now. I almost wrote “write now” which is a bad pun. I feel like I am stuck in one place and can’t move at all, except for in my mind and through my fingers and in the jingling my fingers.

Sarah asks if I am still writing. And I say yes and no, kind of. I talk, for a moment, about how I am not writing the story but I am writing about writing, but that is the story too, kind of, that will become the story, that it what, I guess, although I didn’t say this, I am making the story be, right now, by writing it. Kat is sleeping. But I can sleep in the car tomorrow, when we are driving. Nora left so early, going to sleep. She will not need to sleep tomorrow in the car. I was thinking about how I need to take a break. How I need to let my fingers rest. And how I need to drink a bit of water or something.

But I also wanted to tell you about how while I was talking to Sarah, I started to feel that I was really tired. Also, she said that she was still writing, which is good. We are both still writing, and presumably, Marlon, who is sitting behind me, is still writing too. I want to check the word count again. Maybe I have reached two thousand words now. Maybe Maybe maybe. If I don’t know what to say I am just going to say “I don’t know what to say.” This is a technique I read about in a book about free-writing that we had to read for the class about how to be a writing tutor. The book wasn’t very good, except for suggesting that idea. The book was bad, still, though, because it repeated the same idea again and again and rambled about it. It was not a well written book. To free-write, you just make yourself keep writing something, anything, even if it is just about you not knowing what to write. That is kind of what I am doing now. Maybe I should write more about what I am thinking about and what I was thinking about while writing the story part. About how I wanted her to have a cute lesbian relationship, but also didn’t want her to just be a jerk to her boyfriend. I don’t think she’d really move that quick, in one day. Unless I write well, and make the weird circumstance put a pressure on her that makes her act a weird way this day. I don’t know. I think I need to check the wordcount, update this with it, maybe talk a bit more if I’m just a little short of two thousand, or within a reasonable reach of another good stopping point, and then stop, for a little bit, but just for a little bit. Enough to rest my hands and arms and get a drink and maybe try to wake up a little again. It is quarter of six, feels like quarter of seven. It is pretty fucking late. I am going to check the word count. A little over twenty-five hundred. Perfect stopping point. I can totally do ten thousand words, ‘cause I probably did that in half an hour. I just need another half an hour. Maybe I should just keep going and going though. Maybe I should aim for 18000. Maybe I should try to ensure we break the fifty thousand mark. But then, what if we still fall a little short. Wouldn’t that just be horrible. Maybe we do a cop-out success. Like, “and then someone read the first 20,000 words of Ulysses, which are:….” I think that would be a horrible, but maybe also a brilliant trick. I think I need to go ahead and take the break before I kill myself and hurt my arms/hands, although I do admire my—I just remembered that I hadn’t saved for a while, so I did—but what I admire is my own stamina, I guess, if that is the word. I admire that I’m really trying so hard to make this work.

Maybe my metafiction needs to be more fictional to fit within the story. Maybe I need to say things that are fictional here too. So that I, as author, become a true character. Okay, then, I promise that at least something I say here is a fiction. Which also protects me from a being a liar. Because I am a little obsessive and don’t like to be a liar. That is why I put clauses in that say that some of the dialogue wasn’t a direct transcription. That is why in some places I started that I wasn’t exactly sure how it happened. If I write ten thousand words of this, plus the 7.5 thousand –ish I wrote myself for the story, don’t I win, alone? Even if we don’t succeed as a group? I think that might mean I’d become an over-dominating force in the novel. That is not the point of collaboration, but maybe that is good. I might like that, I mean. I need to take a break, but I am scared that if I stop for a minute, I won’t be able to pick it back up, that I’ll come back and have nothing to say, but I guess I can also write about what I did while I was gone or what is going on in the room now that I’m back, even if I just confirm that nothing significant has changed.

There is at least one thing I want to talk about first though. I want to talk about a writer we were learning about in the short stories class, I think it was Hemingway. Brendan, our teacher, said that he also stopped for the day a little before the end of what he knew was going to happen. So he could come back the next day and know where he was going to start, to get back into the flow or something, I guess, presumably, maybe. Okay, I am going to take a break. But now I am curious again how many words I am at. But if I check it, then I will feel compelled to write about it, so I will save writing about it until I get back. It will be the first thing I will write about when I get back.

I’m back. Just over three thousand. So much to report. I got water. I talked to will. He thinks his ankle in sprained. He is impressed by my productivity. I am nearing the one third of tens thousand mark. I just sneezed and put and off wiping my nose to finish writing a sentence. I am getting tireder and tireder though. Talking to will, I could tell I was not articulating things well. Or understanding well. I though he said “angle” when he said “ankle.” I thought he was saying the meta-fictional angle was a bad choice. But he was saying that his ankle was sprained. I think maybe it was because he was speaking unclearly, but maybe I am getting pretty tired. I wonder if I’ve hit the one third of ten thousand mark yet. I hope what I’m writing isn’t horrific to read. I hope it can be intersperced in the other stuff. I hope someone gets around to editing everything together. It is going to be sad that we are probably going to get pretty close to enough, but not quite there. Probably over forty thousand. Which is going to be close. It is only six am. We could go for a couple more hours. If I could write twenty thousand words—I don’t think I can—maybe that would be enough. Maybe I could just write and write and write. I don’t know. Maybe there is a trick. Maybe I can quote myself. Maybe I can quote something else. Maybe I can quote another part of the story. Maybe I can have pages from the Library of Babylon books. That is a reference to an idea I had, kind of, that I don’t want to explain. I’m sorry these few sentences don’t make sense, but I don’t want to explain. I want to think about something else now. So that I do not have to explain. Now I am thinking about the way my character earlier redirected her thoughts about how she wanted to break up with her boyfriend by trying to think of a tropical beach, and drinking alcohol, and cuddling with bears. My posture was causing my arms to press against my laptop in an uncomfortable way again. It took my a while, relatively, to figure out how to spell uncomfortable. It took me a while, relatively, to spell it that time too. I took my watch off when I readjusted too, because it was pressing into my arm. I think I might be damaging my arms. I hope not. I feel a little bit of a sore numbness in them. I hope they don’t hurt more tomorrow. This is a long paragraph. Maybe I should start a new one. I will start a new one.

Okay. I started a new paragraph. I think I might finally be running out of things to say. No, no, I don’t think I am. I can talk about the word count more, I can also talk about the word count. Could that be another five hundred, already? No, it couldn’t. Well, maybe it could. There is only one way to find out. Except that as—I lost my train of thought because Sarah said something to me. I will write about what Sarah said to me, then I will try to find where I was again.

Sarah said “you can’t rewrite what other people are doing.” And I was confused, because I didn’t know what she was talking about. She explained that in the first set of metafictional material posted online to the wiki we are compiling stuff on, I wondered if, as the founder of this, I could be a like a God, and change what other people were writing. And she said no. I don’t really want to change what other people are writing. At least not that much. Maybe a little? Maybe a lot, actually. I have a secret dream, that having the raw material of this can actually be turned into something decent. Maybe that is just a bad idea. Maybe that is a horrific idea. Maybe it would be easier to write something all new than to transform any of this into something readable. I don’t know how unreadable this is. Maybe it is better than I could imagine. I could go back and try to read some of it and see, but maybe that is a bad idea. I think this part might get too dense. Maybe if it is broken up.

Sarah is distracting me, reading from the meta-fiction page, reading from what Harry wrote.

I am distracting by Sarah. She says she’s done. And I disagree.

Almost 4000 words. We opened the nice soda. Sarah says she’s done. Maybe she is going to write something meta. I don’t know if I’m made up a lie yet. I said I was going to put a lie in here, didn’t I? I am almost at 4000 words. Kat is sleeping. Kat is awake. One of those must be the lie. Except, maybe that it too clear. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Four thousand words. Sarah says she’s going to write something meta. I tell her not to stop. She says “until when?” I say “no.” I say “not like that.” What I mean is, I try to say, to keep writing without little breaks, that the words should just keep flowing, not that she should keep writing until any particular time or anything. Four thousand is nearly five thousand. Five thousand is half of ten thousand. I am not doing bad. Not doing bad. When I get to five thousand, I am going to add up all the material that is on the wiki. And ask Marlon to put we he has written since then online. I am going to try to get a good word count, and I am going to see where we are at. Maybe I will be surprised. Maybe this is still possible. Fuck. Maybe it is not. Maybe Valerie will still come out of somewhere with something. Five thousand words, then I get to see. What am I at now?

Almost at 4100. Almost. Probably by the end of the sentence, yes, by the end of this sentence, I should be.

I take a moment break to talk to Sarah. I don’t want to transcribe it. That is too much thinking for me now. Now it just words. I could quote Gertrude Stein. That is a solution. I can fill in however much more we need with “a word is a word is a word” etc. I tell Sarah she does not need to be honest. I tell her it can be “fictional metafiction” The chronology here is getting out of order. Sarah keeps distracting me. Soon we will have a word count. Then we will know better where we are at. Then we will know better how much more we need to do. When I get to five thousand words, then we will see. Maybe that means one more page of this. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. I think there was something me and Sarah talked about that I wanted to write down but maybe I’ve forgotten it. I hope this all isn’t horrifically boring. Maybe I already wrote it down. I’m trying to get Sarah to write stream of consciousness sort of flowing stream of words like I am writing. I think this is the only way to win now.

I want Harry to get up and I want to tell him we hit fifty thousand words. I want to prove him wrong. Or maybe we can get so close that he will feel bad for not helping. I don’t think that would be make me happy though. Not really. I don’t like that I’m going to put this somewhere were people can read this. I feel uncomfortable with that.

Okay. Everything here is lies. Everything. None of it is true. Now I feel more comfortable. Now I am not revealing anything.

I thought of something I wanted to write about that I really didn’t want to put on the internet. I feel weird about the dirty sex part, because I kind of want to tell the whole school we succeeded, if we did, but I don’t want my teachers to read the dirty sex part, because it is not even as redeemable as when I sometimes have dirty sex parts in other things I give them, because in other things I give them they are better written and I include them because I think they are important to the story and not just fun dirty sex parts. I don’t know. I am getting very tired now. By 8 o’clock, maybe we can hit fifty thousand words, that would be so cool. I don’t know what to write. The fancy soda was okay, but not that great. I am sorry Kat was asleep when he opened it.

It is getting light outside now. I did not notice that at first, because my back it to the window, but now, when I turn around and glance over my shoulder—as I write—it is clearly, clearly getting light. It perhaps it light. Perhaps it is light already. Yeah, I look again, and it’s pretty much light. Fuck. I don’t like that.

It has been a long time since I pulled an all nighter. I don’t ever do it to do my own work, but something in past years I have done it to stay up with friends who are doing work or to—I pause to scratch my head—just hang out with friends. This year I have done neither. But tonight I have done it. Sometimes I stay up late, until four or five, doing work or because I can’t sleep, but it is not the same. It is not quite as late, but it is also not the same intentions. Tomorrow is going to suck. I have an essay to write and I don’t know when exactly I’m going to write it and I think it’s going to be a bad essay anyway. I might be a fair bit short of the five thousand, although I might be nearly there or there, but I am going to check now and see.

About two hundreds words short. I started to write “two thousand” but that it not right. That is not right at all. Thank God. Only two hundred words until I’m at five thousand words of new meta-fiction, since I started trying to do it fast and hard like this. I am going strong and strong and stronger. I am getting ramblinger and less coherent too, perhaps.

The novel was too structured for Rory, so he didn’t get into it. I don’t like that. I think maybe he could have tried to find some way to fit in. I am down with dada and experimental and metafictional. I am down with the novel not really being coherent or cohesive, or if those properties really happen in a non-direct way.

When I hit five thousand. I am going to put this all up on the internet. I am going to get a master word count. We are going to evaluate our position. We are going to see how we are doing. Maybe it is impossible. Maybe it is still possible. I hope I don’t need to write another 10,000 words myself. Would I do it? Perhaps.

I am going to check the word count again. Maybe it is at enough. If it is, I will report that, but that is all that I report.

Yes, just over, at 5015

We’re at 40,700. Together. Marlon and Sarah have agreed to write 2,000 more words. Sarah might write a sex scene. We might need one of those. I’m going to write 5,000. We are going to hit 50,000 words. We are we are we are we are. I know we can do it. Sarah is going write an epic sex scene for 2,000. It’s going to be two girls. It is going to be long and awkward. Sarah needs to think of a way to write it. Maybe I need to write 9000 words. Would I be willing to do that. If that’s what it takes to write a novel tonight. Fuck. I don’t know. This is getting ridiculous. This is ridiculous. I don’t know what I’m doing any more. All nighter. All night. Novel-night. One-night. I’m getting loose and tangled. I need to pull this back into a little bit more focus.

Kat is asleep. Do I resent her a little bit for not being here, with us? I resent everyone for not being as able to me to looser up and just smash shit out. We need to create lots of words. I wish we’d had a couple dozen people. I wish everyone had been willing to be here all night. We could have smashed a novel out like that, lickety-split, right on out. Maybe Valeria will still materialize content. Maybe she will send me a bunch of stuff, but she will send it later tomorrow. Or a week from now. I don’t know what to expect from Valerie. She is a wildcard. Maybe someone else will add something big before we finish. Maybe we will all thing we are still going to be going for a while, and then someone will add something else, and then we will just be done. I still have so much to write. I don’t know how I am going to get there. I would kind of like to write about sex instead. I think that would be more fun to think about, but that would be more tiring for me, because it would require more mental imaginative work.

They are talking about Marlon writing penises on bathroom walls. They are talking about—I don’t know. Will is back, he is drinking sparking raspberry. He came in pretending to be a penis. We are talking about publishing this instead of anything else in Glacial Erratic. Talking is distracting me. We are talking about calling the nurse on duty and about penises and about publishing this in Glacial Erratic. We are talking about publishing this and polishing this and making it into something cohesive and coherent. Integrating the meta-material with the rest is going to be the tricky part, I think, I think, I believe. This is a novel about writing a novel, in two parts. We are talking about how most people included a dream or fantasy or memory in their piece. I think it’s because classroom time is boring and we wanted to get out of that, so we had to go somewhere, but we had to write it in the structure, and it made us get out of it another way. I see something moving in the corner of my eye and I think it is an animal, but it is probably just the reflection of my shoe.

I am getting less and less coherent and the night wears on. I think this symbolizes, or is, in a way, the dramatic arch of that is happening. We are getting tireder, but we are plowing on. We plow on like a snow plow. We can’t construct good writing any more. We will victor. We will win. We will all win national novel writing month. And we will be some of the first people to win too. I need to remember to update my webcomic today. Maybe I will take a break and do that. Maybe in a bit. Maybe when I’m half-way through this chunk of 5,000 words. I wonder how Sarah’s work is going, with the sex scene. She is rubbing her neck and not typing at the moment. I hope it is going okay.

I am very thankful for Sarah and Marlon sticking this out. I never been friends with Marlon really, but now I deeply respect him. We have not really been interacting enough for me to feel that we are now friends, but I feel that there is a bond of some kind now. The bond of staying up all night and writing a novel together. I am going to check my word count. A little over three fourths of a thousand words, that is, a little over seven hundred and fifty. That is not too far away from a thousand. A thousand is within read now. It is only seven. How much longer do I need for just a bit over four thousand words? Who is going to drive us back to Pibly? Who is going to load up the car? I am going to be very tired. Fuck my Kafka essay though, not tonight, I do not worry about it tonight. I can do it Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday evening. I do not like putting off my work, but I think it’s important to something do something exciting and fun, although this isn’t really exactly exciting, and it’s not quite fun, in that sense. I think it is rewarding though. We are going to hit fifty thousand words and we are going to be very proud. It is an experience and stuff. I am learning how to lead art events. I am learning how to write.

Tonight, while writing, I stumbled across an interesting technique of blending what characters are saying with what they are thinking. It is something I may want to refine and use in a “more serious” piece of writing. I am glad I “discovered” it. It seems to offer some tangible productive value to this evening. I must be over one thousand words now, I must. How quickly can I update my webcomic? I don’t want to be diverted too long. Okay, I will check the word count, and update this on it, and then I will take a break to quickly update my webcomic. A little over a thousand. Good.

I updated. Sarah put on music. I recognize it, but can’t think of the name right now, though I know I know it. It is the white stripes. That’s what it is. It is the pretty song about the kids becoming friends in grade school. It is a very pretty song, and I’m glad that Sarah put it. I can not see Marlon, because he is behind me, and I can’t see Kat, because she is behind me and in a sleeping bag, sleeping, but I can see Sarah, because she is in front of me, thought a little to the right. I glance up at her from time to time and look at her facial expressions. She looks a little upset. Or like she’s having trouble with this. I am sorry. And sorry that I am trying to get her to do it. But I need other people to be here working, or I don’t know what I can do. I don’t think I can write 9000 words alone. Nor do I think that I could—no, I mean to say I can’t do it both because it is a lot of words, but also because I don’t think I could do even five thousand with the company. I have been really inconsistent about numbers, whether I write them out and type them. Typing is quicker, but I write them out sometimes because it is more words. Sarah seems to be struggling. I worry that it will be awkward if/when she read me writing about watching her, and writing about thinking about her reading me writing about her reading about writing about her. Etc. I worry that it is awkward. But maybe it would be. Maybe acknowledging it will help it not be. Maybe it won’t be. I wonder how many words I’m at. I don’t think I’m at 2,000 yet, but I might be at 1,500 now. Maybe. I don’t know. I guess I will check, because I don’t know what else to say or write about. At 2,000 I will take a break, and walk around a little bit, and stretch my leg, which is starting to hurt. Maybe I will think of something good to write about the last three thousand words. I hope Sarah and Marlon both do a good 2,000. I don’t think I can really pick up any slack. And I guess I really need to do 5,300, if they only each do 2,000. Because we were only at 40,700. At first I asked them to do each do 2,150, but that is a weird number. 2 thousand seemed like a clearer number to ask for. I am hoping they will both go a big over, more like the 2150 I originally asked for. There was something I was thinking about writing about but I forgot. I was also thinking about talking more about the generally process behind all this, I think that might be a good thing to include, maybe. I was also going to say that I’m probably nearly at 2,000 words now. Probably not quite, I would guess, but probably pretty damn close now. Maybe. I will check. No. No. Only a bit over 1500. Only a little less that 1600. That is not that far, but it is still a way away from 2000. I just saved. I would hate to lose a bunch now. I am not too sleepy. But I am tired. I will fall asleep easily, and I will sleep all day. And then I will get up and go to a party. And I will never write my essay, it appears. Maybe I can do some homework in the car, but I don’t know what sort of homework I can do in the car, because I don’t think I can do my essay in the car. Damn, that is unfortunate. I think I’m getting rambling. This is getting less related to this.

I need to bring it back to this. We are going to reach fifty thousand words. I can feel it within reach, so close. We are approaching 45,000 now. We are so close to 45,000 now, if we haven’t met it. Harry left, and he did not believe we were going to reach it, but we are going to reach it. We had to get meta-fictional, and I think we’ve been kind of misusing that word, maybe, but using that, even though it seemed at first we didn’t really want to go into that territory, we are going to reach 50,000. And then maybe someone will add something else, in the morning, after we go to sleep. Maybe it will end up somewhere closer to 60,000 words. That would be nice. Except if it makes me feel like all this that I am doing now is futile. I am glad we have a few strong souls to see this through. I am glad for Sarah and Marlon. I am very thankful. I saved again. I will start to save more and more, because the later it gets, the more devastating a loss will be. I am glad we didn’t have anyone loss a major part of anything. That would have been terrible.
What is the word count now?

I checked. And now it is very close to 2000 words. Just seventy-five short, and that is within what I have already written since checking. I will break 2000 so soon, and then I will take a break, and then I will come back, and maybe I will actually write some more story, but that is probably unlikely. I don’t know. Maybe I will at least write something a little better than this drivel. I must be at 2000 now, right? I will check again. Yes. 2010. Plus these.

Yesterday, I didn’t go out at all while it was light outside. And now I’ve stayed up all night. And now it is totally light outside. It has been a weird “day”. I am running out of things to say, but I must go on. I am still typing fast, but I think I what I am saying is getting worse and worse.

In the bathroom, I thought about what I’d write in the announcement to the school saying that we’d succeeded. I thought about what I’d write here, talking about thinking about what I’d write in the announcing. I am thinking about thinking. And this is imploding. And think that was point. I think the only rational conclusion for meta-fiction is for it to implode. But maybe I’m not sure what I’m talking about any more. I am tired and sleepy, and my arms and hands are getting sore from typing for so long, and I don’t know what I’m doing any more and I’m getting kind of bored. The glint on my glasses looked like something moving out of the corner of my eye. I think it’s an animal. This is being a theme. The screensaver on Kat’s computer, also moving in my periphery, is also reminiscent, slightly, of an animal. I feel uncomfortable. My mouth feels funny. I don’t know how I’m going to keep going. Beckett. I can’t go on, I must go on, I will go on. Harry said we was thinking about that too. We are thinking about Beckett. How can long rambles not remind us of Beckett. I don’t want to talk about Beckett.

I want to talk about something nice. I want to talk about my character. This is becoming too much like Beckett. I want to write about them having cute sex. I don’t think it’s in their characters to have cute sex this day though. Maybe they survive the biohazard and grow older together. Maybe they have sex in a few months. They it is not mean, because she didn’t just dump Michael. Then it can be nice. Okay, in a month, they have sex. That is outside of the scope of what this story was supposed to be, but what of what I’ve been doing for hours here now isn’t outside that original scope. I wonder how Sarah and Marlon are doing on their 2,000 words. I hear that sound of clicks, but they are not as fast as me. If they were as fast as me, they would be done. I would be sad if they were done. I don’t want to write another 2,000 words alone. I think they might have only stayed because it was clear I was serious because I took on a bigger commitment than I asked both of them to do together. I will be right back.

I am back. I was contemplating whether I would have been able to do this alone. If I’d just kept going strong for a whole night. Or a whole day. I think my bad idea for how to do this from the beginning might have been a better idea. Maybe it just would have been a better idea for me, easier for me to get into.

I want to say something smart and insightful and interesting.

But I don’t know what that could be.

I wonder what my word count is it. Maybe I am half-way there. What do you think? I think second-person is a funny thing to use in a novel. What do you think? I think I will check the word count. I am over half way that. I am at 2,600. I am approaching the 3,000 mark. Then I will be, kind of, in the home stretch. That will feel nice. I want to get there. Maybe I will be done in an hour. That is a pleasant thought.

We talked about eating the chocolate cake when we finished. I joked that after we finish the novel, it will then be our obligation to finish the chocolate cake. No. No, chocolate cake for me. Maybe only a bite. It sounds disgusting now. There is still so much pizza. For a moment I wondered why I was hungry, but then I remembered all the pizza I ate. I wish more people had showed up. When I write the email announcing our success to the school, if I write it, I will say that though we didn’t get as many people as I was expecting, we still pulled through, stepped up the challenge, and succeeded. I hope we can be something the community can be proud of, and not just something to be ashamed of. I will save again. I saved again. It would be a shame to lose stuff now. How much have I gained on 3,000 now? I will check again, although I think I’ve started checking too frequently. I am about 165 words away now. I am approaching the mark very quickly. If I forget about it for a minute and write something else then I will be there in no time. I will take a moment pause and ask how they are doing. Sarah’s at 793. That’s okay. I am ahead. Maybe I will keep writing more, and then she will not need to write 2000 words. I wonder how Marlon is doing. Maybe 3000 is just half-way. Maybe I need to write six thousand. Maybe I should slow down and write the sex scene that I forgot I was going to write. It take place in the future. It takes place at Lindsay’s house.

They are in her bedroom. They undress each other. They don’t actually go any further than Lindsay went with Michael, but they kind of do, because it is different when it is two girls and not a girl and a boy. I don’t want to talk about this. They undress each other, and then they look at each other. They touch each other. It is not sleazy. They do it in a very nice way. They do it in a gentle way. They are sitting on the bed. Somehow, it is sexual without being at all gross. It’s sensual.—I pause for a moment to tell Sarah that now I’m kind of writing a story again—kind of—What happens next? Rose is the more powerful one, even though she is younger. That is an interesting dynamic. But Lindsay is kind of into it. Rose said she likes to be hit. I made Rose say that. But since Rose said it, maybe Lindsay hits Rose. Maybe it is naughty sex, with hitting. Maybe it is not. Rose is flexible. Sometimes Rose likes it like that, but not always, not necessarily. Today, it is just gentle. It is soft, nice petting and playing. Then they are naked, but they are not having sex. They are doing something else. They are listening to music. And they are, I’m not sure. They are hanging out and talking, but they are not wearing clothing. They are being sweet and open with each other, and it is very nice and soft and warm. They are cuddling. They are cuddling and listening to music. The biohazard has passed. I don’t know how these things work.

Maybe it is Lindsay’s new house. With her foster parents. I don’t know. Lindsay is not thinking about this now. It is not important to her. Lindsay does not like being hit, even though Rose likes hitting. Rose is okay with this, because Rose has other people who are okay with hitting. Lindsay is okay with this. Everyone is okay with everything. Everyone is happy. Except the parents. The parents do not approve of all this sex, even though they only suspect. That is another story. Maybe the parents are dead. But then the foster, or adapted, parents are even worse. This is how I write stories.

I do no like writing characters who I do not like. I like to love all my characters, and I want them to have good personalities and I want them to be good people, and I want them to be pretty and smart. I want them to be like me, I guess. I like them to have names I like. I don’t know if I like Lindsay enough. Sometimes she says things I don’t quite like. The name also does not quite satisfy me. I wonder how many words I have written. Probably over 3,000 now, probably most certainly over that. I will check. Wow. I am almost at thirty-five hundred. That is a lot. I am doing very well.

I want to write another sex scene. This is going to be in the past though. It is going to be a contrast. With Lindsay feels all nice and open with Rose, it’s going to be very different with Michael. With Michael, it is after school at his house while his parents are out. They are going to be worried about his sister hearing them or something. They are embarrassed. And they don’t know what they are doing. Michael can’t decide whether he should try in get her under the blanket and then make a move, or just make a move. She is trying to figure out how far Michael wants to take things. They are not good at communicating.

Okay. She is not totally gay. She is bi with a preference for girls. It’s really just the relationship with Michael wasn’t right. He’s nice. He’s a good guy. But they don’t really work together. It like, they don’t share interests or something. Or the relationship is just on the wrong terms. They aren’t honest and open, I guess.

I don’t know how to write a sex scene that shows this. Maybe I can’t write sex scenes that are actually supposed to mean something. I don’t know. I am tired of writing. I am so tired of writing. I wish Kat wasn’t asleep. That is bad for morale. I wish Harry hadn’t left. That is bad for morale. And perhaps he could have cranked out a bit more. That would have been nice. That would have been a little bit less for us to work on. Work count? Approaching four thousand. Cool. I will plow on to that mark, and then I will take a beak.

There must be something else for me to write about. Does Lindsay need more closure? She survives. There is that. I don’t know. Are all the parents supposed to be dead? There are issue of the world that we didn’t discuss. Okay, though. Lindsay and Rose are alive. And whatever tragedy has happened, they get over that. And they grow up and they lead fairly normal lives. The rest of their lives aren’t notable enough for books, but might be notable enough for erotica. There is a bunch of good sex scenes in their lives. Some of it in not really erotica material though. Some of it is just nice and cute and warm. I don’t think that what erotica is supposed to be, but maybe I don’t read enough of it.

Sarah says hers is turning too sappy. I think that is good. I think it will be good if this all just ends somewhere else. I think that’s really the point. It could end with my describing the commune that Rose, and Lindsay, and many friends and lovers live on when they are in their twenties. And what does Lindsay do professionally? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. She’s not really the artist type, and I don’t want to give her a job that I wouldn’t enjoy. Rose does tech theatre though. That was a high-school extracurricular that I abandoned when I got to college, because I didn’t want it to eat my life. Rose has cute sex and a career in tech theatre, and I live vicariously through her. Four thousand. I will save and take a break 8am. 13 hours.

Okay. We are in the home stretch now. Is there anything else I want to say before we end? I don’t know. Maybe I should try to just explain the idea. Explain what was happening.

Every November is National Novel Writing Month. Every yeah, a bunch of people try to each write a 50,000 word novel (at least) in November. At school every year, a bunch of kids give it a try. People rarely seem to succeed. It’s just too hard, around all the school work and stuff. So I figure, why don’t we do one together. Collaboratively. One novel. One night. We stay up all night and we smash out 50,000 words, and then we’ve done it, but then we’re done. I got $50 from my dorm and $150 from the school’s community council. We bought a bunch of soda and candy, and a cake, and chips, and coffee—I think only one cup was made—and we order ten pizzas. We gave two full pizzas away, I think, and all ate a lot, and gave a few slices to people passing by, and there are two and half left now.

I thought that at least over a dozen people would come. More people said they were going to. And then they backed out, I guess. I don’t know what happened exactly. Some people weren’t here from the beginning, and then had a hard time joining into it once it had got going. I don’t know. These things happen.

We need more people. I think the all-night part scared people off. I think it wouldn’t have been all-night if people hadn’t been scared off. I think I should have advertised it as running from 8pm until 1am. I think more people would have come, and then, even if we weren’t done at 1am, more people would have been willing to stay once they were involved, and even just a few of us could finish it up.

I think we should have done a plot that was easier to drop in and out of. I’ve said that already, somewhere else. My arm is hurting again. I think that would have made it easier.

Will there be another one? Next year? We will see. Noah and Dara will be here, that will make it more fun. A core group of me and Kat and Dara and Noah and Harry. Maybe Harrison will actually do it. Maybe Sarah will still be here. Maybe Marlon will still be here and do it again. He left the room and I don’t know where he went. I hope he didn’t just leave. That would make me sad. Maybe I can get Zack to do it. Maybe I can get more of the Infoshop to do it. Maybe, maybe. Next year we will do it again, but we will do it quicker and better. Maybe we can do this every weekend. One weekend we will learn and stumble into a brilliant, brilliant novel.

I am at 4,500 words. That is very close. So close. I can almost taste it. That is a metaphor.

I don’t know if there’s anything else I need to say. Maybe I could write a sex scene. I don’t really know who Lindsay is, as a character. She cusses a lot, more inside her head. I have a sense, sometimes, of who she is, but I don’t really know. I don’t know what knowing would mean though. I hate thinking of characters as real people.

I’m stuck now. I don’t know what to say or where to go. This has been exhausted. Barth wrote something about the “literature of exhaustion” but I think he meant something a little different. By nine, maybe I will be home, and asleep, in my bed. I will brush my teeth first, and some of the taste of sugar rotting my mouth out of my mouth. Soon it will be over.

We will soon reach 50,000. I will have written over a fifth of them myself. That is more than anyone else alone. But, perhaps my words are worth less. Someone else probably wrote a better story than me. I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of novel this will be. It has not really sunken in yet. A novel in a night. Really. It was be a success. That is pretty cool. Pretty fucking cool.

4750 now, just about, yes, 4750, I am breaking and passing. I am in the home stretch. I will load up the car and then I will see how Sarah and Marlon are doing. I will reach 5300 and then I will load up the car and see how they are doing. I will write more if I need to. When I leave to load up the car, I probably will not know if I am going to be writing more or now. I won’t know, probably, and perhaps that will lend something interesting to the quality of what I write. Then, I will wake up Kat, and we will drive home. Maybe I will drive us back, since she will be sleepy from being asleep.

We are getting so close now. The novel is within grasp. I feel that this is some sort of mystery novel, and the elusive element is the novel itself. We are trying to create enough so we can grasp it as a novel. The reader will live vicariously through our success, somehow, perhaps. We will be some of the first people to finish Nanowrimo this year. I wonder if there is a list of who finished it first. That would be cool. I don’t know what to say. I am almost at 5,000, but I want to be at 5,300. So that Sarah and Marlon each only have to write exactly 2,000.

Sarah says she started writing in the past tense by accident and needs to fix it. Hm. Word count? Just over 5,000. I am closing in on the prize. The prize?

Another sex scene? Three hundred more words on sex? Can I do that?

Cunt, man, cunt. Pink. Fingers into cunt. Lips parting, gasping. Cunt. I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I can’t write girl sex because I’m a boy. Maybe. Maybe I am just too tired right now. Maybe I am focusing too much on the cunt, and not on the scene. Rose says “lay down” and Lindsay does” Rose pulls up Lindsay skirt and pulls down her underwear. Rose touch Lindsay and Lindsay moans, and Rose says “Shut up.” No. I do not want it to be like that. I want them to be gentler. Rose Massages Lindsay’s back, and then she pulls off Lindsay’s shirt. She whispers “is this okay?” and Linday’s nods. Rose unhooks her bra. Rose moves her hand down and slides into Linday’s pants. Rose hesitates. She’s not really sure what she’s doing. She pulls her hand back. She pulls Linday so she’s laying down. She crawls around to the other side of her and pulls off her pants. “Still okay?” she asks again. Lindsay can only nod. Rose grabs the waistband of her underpants. She looks at Lindsay. Lindsay nods. Rose says “I need you to say something.” Lindsay says “Please?” And Rose pulls them off. Rose says, “Will you undress me?” And Lindsay does. Rose is wearing the same four garment, Lindsay takes the off in the same order. Even sex gets tedious. Then they are naked. They are laying in bed. “What do you want to do?” Rose asks. Lindsay shrugs. Rose stares at her. Rose is trying to make Lindsay learn how to say what she wants. Lindsay doesn’t understand this at first but—

We need five hundred and thirty more words. It is so close. I don’t know what Marlon’s been doing. Poetry? And stuff? I am eager to read it? Once I catch up on my work?

Maybe I should keep going with the sex scene? I feel like the energy is lost.

It is approaching nine-o’clock. Approaching the fourteen-hour mark.

We need more words. Where are my words? What else is there to say? Isn’t this exhausted yet. I will event one more character.

His name is Dan Copulsky. He is a junior. He is interesting in creative writing and literary studies.

Only four hundred and thirty more. Or less.

Sarah says something funny, but I am too tired too laugh. Maybe it is not funny. I don’t know. This is exhaustion. Not just “I am sleepy” but “there is no where else for this to go.” My last ending was better. Mid-sex scene, that is a classy way to go out. That is a real classy way to end.

Now I’m back to rambling again.

Dan Copulsky is in a three-way with Rose and Lindsay. Lindsay’s into boys, sometimes. Dan is not really a boy. He has a penis, but he’s not really a boy.

They all get naked, and then they don’t really know what to do. They’ve all had sex before, but never with two people at once. They are all worried that they will get more into one person and someone will be left out. They decide to pick one of them randomly and have the other two people just work on pleasuring them. Maybe each person will get a turn. It is Dan’s turn. He is enjoying himself.

Writing can be masturbatory, but his is getting too much. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where this can go. I tell Sarah that I have long been past story. She asks if I am ending my story and I don’t even know how to answer. What story? How much of the story I am writing is the story of writing this story? Doesn’t its end end itself.

I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. We might be over the 50,000 word mark now, but it’s hard to know. It’s hard to say. I want to write just a little more. I want to make sure. If I write just a little more, than I can be sure, and then I can rest easy. I want to rest easy. I want to be a success, and a winner. We are going to be winners.

“I can’t believe we actually did this,” Sarah says. Have we done it yet? Have we done it now?

Probably. It would be hard for us not to have done it now. In another seventy words though, then I’ll be sure. Okay. So close. So close, so close.

Is there anything final I want to say? There should be something. A twist.

Rose is really a boy. Rose killed everywhere. There are aliens. No.

Twenty-six more words. We are there. YAY! Yay! Hip hip hooray!
Fifteen. What else is there to say? A countdown? Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

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