LJ Idol Season 9, Week 30: Critical Hit
The Story of NaNoWriMo, 2014
In other words, How Alicia Went Crazy, 2014
Five Days Before NaNoWriMo:
Alicia logs in on the NaNoWriMo website for the first time in a little less than a year. She fiddles around with it a moment before making the commitment to write a Novel this November, except she has no idea what. She intends on completely pantsing it -- plans on writing a new story, entirely on the fly.
Out of curiosity, she checks on the novel from the year before. She knows she won NaNo2013, but she doesn’t remember what it was she wrote. She doesn’t even remember writing the excerpt she posted a year ago -- though it stars one of her characters from her longest-running universe, Savin.
When she looks up from the couch, she sees him. His hair’s cut shorter than usual, but those green eyes and those black, thin glasses are all she needs to see.
“Oh, fuck no,” she groans.
Savin grins. He leans against the wall opposite of her, arms folded over his chest. “You know you want to,” he says, still grinning. “Maybe you should read the rest of your NaNo from last year.”
It’s not a suggestion.
Two Days Before NaNoWriMo:
“I fucking hate you two,” she grumbles, raking her fingers through her hair. She’s lying in her bed, her phone inches from her face as she finishes her read-through of last year’s NaNo. Two men share the bed with her, moans and fervently whispered orders escaping the smaller, blond one.
They ignore her. They’re trying to “help” and “inspire” her and she is having none of it, turning away from them both and opening up her facebook messenger app, tapping the picture of her best friend’s face.
So I think I’m writing J&S again for NaNo, after all she laments. She hears a sharp cry from behind her, and Savin later groaning as his movements finally come to a halt. And I think it fucking starts with what’s /supposed/ to be their one night stand.
Sarah’s only response is a looping series of L’s and O’s.
November 1st:
“So, that open topic...” Savin whispers in her ear, leaning over the back of the couch.
“I’m not writing you two for open topic,” Alicia mutters, her eyes scanning the document labeled, “Half finished Idol pieces.” She reads the words she aborted for one reason or another, though none of them happen to particularly catch her eye. Not even the nonfiction piece -- the one she started when she tried to chronicle her escape from Evelyn’s house. The tension’s there -- in fact, it’s just right. It shows her mounting panic while she packed up what she could, but --
“Hey, weren’t you going to write me proposing to Savin for Idol, once?” Jazz asks, sitting beside her. He crosses one leg over the other and leans an elbow on the arm of the couch.
“That was for Last Chance, when I thought I might sign up and do both, just in --” And she stops herself, her fingers already navigating her towards the piece in question. She narrows her eyes at him. “I am not writing you two for Idol,” she repeats, folding her arms over her chest. “You two have gotten me voted out, every fucking season I’ve played --”
“No we haven’t!” they protest in unison.
“Season 8, I wrote that piece where the two of you kept getting cockblocked, and I got voted out,” she starts, ticking off with her fingers. “Exhibit A, I wrote that thinly veiled stalker-Savin, victim-Jazz piece, and I got voted out. Exhibit B, I wrote the end of ‘Gray Morning’ with Savin figuring out Mitchel was still in love with you, and I got -- voted -- out. I am not writing you two for open topic.”
“Oh, c’mon, that stalker-Savin victim-Jazz piece wasn’t really us,” Savin grumbles, moving to stand behind Jazz and placing a hand on Jazz’s shoulder. “And what did you expect to happen after writing ‘Fucking Vacation’? Even you admitted it wasn’t all that great --”
“No,” she insists, turning her attention back to the netbook. “I’ll think of something else to write.”
And she almost does.
Almost.
November 9th:
She sits, and she writes. And she writes. And she writes. And she writes, and for once, Jazz and Savin are silent. Absent. Involved in their roles in the story, until --
A heavy silence overcame the Council, and Jazz had to fight the urge to bite his bottom lip. Had he said the wrong thing? Except he then felt Richard’s hand land on his shoulder, heavy and comforting all at once. “Callahan has a point,” Richard said, patting Jazz’s shoulder before his fingers slipped away.
A shiver rolled down Jazz’s spine at the touch, and he avoided the eyes of his fellow Councilors, wishing his muscles wouldn’t feel so tense.
She looks up and turns her head to the right. Jazz sits beside her, his focus not on her and his lip caught in his teeth. “You had a thing with the previous Emperor?” she asks, her eyes wide and her voice quiet.
“Of course he didn’t,” Savin snorts to her left. He shakes his head.
“Dude, Savin, of course he did --”
“He had one with Mitchel, yeah. But Emperor Casio? No,” Savin says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right, Jazz?”
Jazz nods his head. “Right. I mean, the man was attractive, but --”
“You think anyone older than you is attractive,” Savin teases. Jazz just scoffs and rolls his eyes.
Alicia tunes them out. They’re about to have one of their ridiculous arguments, anyway, and it won’t be helpful to the rest of the scene she’s writing now. Except the writing grinds to a halt, as the words no longer come to her.
It’s not until way later that evening, when she’s brewing coffee at work, that she understands why. Jazz stands just in her periphery, Emperor Casio wrapping his arms around him from behind, his lips on Jazz’s neck. The pained and guilt-laden expression on Jazz’s face says it all.
“Oh, you motherfucker,” she hisses out loud, banging the brewer down on the counter. Her coworker, Krysten, just raises an eyebrow at her, and Alicia’s face burns as she returns to the task at hand.
“Your characters again?” Krysten asks, a hint of laughter in her voice.
Alicia doesn’t say anything, but her face burns hotter as she nods her head.
November 30th:
She’s slogged through some forty thousand-some words by this point. Her eyes lock on the screen, burning with exhaustion. Her fingers hover over the keys. She has less than a thousand words to go. A thousand words, and she’ll win NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row, and --
“I didn’t tell him the whole truth, you know,” Jazz whispers to her right. His legs are tucked underneath him on the couch, his chin in the palm of his hand as he absently stares towards the bedroom. Savin is passed out in her bed, having worked from seven ‘til seven the night before. She wishes she could kick him out of it and take his place, but she can’t. Not yet. Not until she wins.
“I know,” she mutters, not even looking up from her screen. “I’m still fucking pissed at you about that.”
Jazz bites his lip and looks away.
She sighs and shakes her head, turning her attention back to the screen. “I expect better from you,” she explains, scrubbing her face with the palm of her hand. “Savin’s the one who usually lies to me, not you.”
“It is rather disappointing, is it not?” another voice asks. Alicia snaps her head to her left, noticing the man in a pinstripe suit casually leaning over the couch, a thin smirk on his face. “Jasper’s usually quite honest -- even disgustingly so -- and yet...”
“What do you want, Mitchel?” she barks, cutting him off. She doesn’t have time for this. She just wants to get some goddamn sleep, already.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mitchel asks, tweaking the knot of his tie as he walks around the back of the couch, fingers trailing along the edge of it. He gestures to Jazz. “Jasper is not the one to tell Bates the truth.”
“Of course -- you’re the one who tells him,” Alicia grumbles, frowning. She rubs her forehead. “Look, the only thing that matters to me is that Savin finds out the truth before ‘Gray Morning’ -- because that’d be really fucked up if Savin doesn’t know before he and Jazz get mar --” She cuts herself off, her stomach plummeting to the floor as realization sinks it.
She turns to glare at Jazz. “He doesn’t find out until ‘Gray Morning’?” she shrieks, throwing the netbook down and pushing herself off the couch, pacing in front of it. Another realization strikes her, causing her to stumble over her own two feet.
“This is why I needed to write this book, isn’t it?” she asks, staring at Jazz in disbelief. “I needed to write this -- this fucking piece of shit novel, because you couldn’t man up and tell Savin the truth? This is what breaks you two?” She throws her hands up in the air and turns on her heel. “That’s it, I’m done. Fucking DONE, I tell you. I quit. Y’all are fucking making me insane.”
She doesn’t make it very far, crashing into another body as she storms towards her bedroom. “What’s going on?” Savin asks, his voice thick with sleep. “Why’re you shouting? And what’s he doing here?” he continues, glaring in Mitchel’s direction. Mitchel just scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest.
“He lives here,” Alicia says, a crazed laugh escaping her. They all live here. Together. Probably for the rest of her life, and she can’t get rid of them. She gestures back over to where Jazz is sitting, wide-eyed and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “And ask your husband. He’s the one who’s been keeping shit from the both of us.”
She doesn’t look back as she slams the bedroom door behind her.
That is, until she sneaks out to retrieve her netbook, fingers pecking furiously at the keys while Jazz and Savin argue in the background, too enmeshed in a later part of their story to notice her. When she crosses the finish line of fifty thousand, she shuts the netbook down, lies down in her bed, and finally -- finally -- their voices disappear.
She vows never to do NaNoWriMo again.
Alicia would like everyone to know she is not legitimately crazy, but she does have a small colony of characters living in her head and sometimes it gets REAL DAMN LOUD, okay?
In other words, How Alicia Went Crazy, 2014
Five Days Before NaNoWriMo:
Alicia logs in on the NaNoWriMo website for the first time in a little less than a year. She fiddles around with it a moment before making the commitment to write a Novel this November, except she has no idea what. She intends on completely pantsing it -- plans on writing a new story, entirely on the fly.
Out of curiosity, she checks on the novel from the year before. She knows she won NaNo2013, but she doesn’t remember what it was she wrote. She doesn’t even remember writing the excerpt she posted a year ago -- though it stars one of her characters from her longest-running universe, Savin.
When she looks up from the couch, she sees him. His hair’s cut shorter than usual, but those green eyes and those black, thin glasses are all she needs to see.
“Oh, fuck no,” she groans.
Savin grins. He leans against the wall opposite of her, arms folded over his chest. “You know you want to,” he says, still grinning. “Maybe you should read the rest of your NaNo from last year.”
It’s not a suggestion.
Two Days Before NaNoWriMo:
“I fucking hate you two,” she grumbles, raking her fingers through her hair. She’s lying in her bed, her phone inches from her face as she finishes her read-through of last year’s NaNo. Two men share the bed with her, moans and fervently whispered orders escaping the smaller, blond one.
They ignore her. They’re trying to “help” and “inspire” her and she is having none of it, turning away from them both and opening up her facebook messenger app, tapping the picture of her best friend’s face.
So I think I’m writing J&S again for NaNo, after all she laments. She hears a sharp cry from behind her, and Savin later groaning as his movements finally come to a halt. And I think it fucking starts with what’s /supposed/ to be their one night stand.
Sarah’s only response is a looping series of L’s and O’s.
November 1st:
“So, that open topic...” Savin whispers in her ear, leaning over the back of the couch.
“I’m not writing you two for open topic,” Alicia mutters, her eyes scanning the document labeled, “Half finished Idol pieces.” She reads the words she aborted for one reason or another, though none of them happen to particularly catch her eye. Not even the nonfiction piece -- the one she started when she tried to chronicle her escape from Evelyn’s house. The tension’s there -- in fact, it’s just right. It shows her mounting panic while she packed up what she could, but --
“Hey, weren’t you going to write me proposing to Savin for Idol, once?” Jazz asks, sitting beside her. He crosses one leg over the other and leans an elbow on the arm of the couch.
“That was for Last Chance, when I thought I might sign up and do both, just in --” And she stops herself, her fingers already navigating her towards the piece in question. She narrows her eyes at him. “I am not writing you two for Idol,” she repeats, folding her arms over her chest. “You two have gotten me voted out, every fucking season I’ve played --”
“No we haven’t!” they protest in unison.
“Season 8, I wrote that piece where the two of you kept getting cockblocked, and I got voted out,” she starts, ticking off with her fingers. “Exhibit A, I wrote that thinly veiled stalker-Savin, victim-Jazz piece, and I got voted out. Exhibit B, I wrote the end of ‘Gray Morning’ with Savin figuring out Mitchel was still in love with you, and I got -- voted -- out. I am not writing you two for open topic.”
“Oh, c’mon, that stalker-Savin victim-Jazz piece wasn’t really us,” Savin grumbles, moving to stand behind Jazz and placing a hand on Jazz’s shoulder. “And what did you expect to happen after writing ‘Fucking Vacation’? Even you admitted it wasn’t all that great --”
“No,” she insists, turning her attention back to the netbook. “I’ll think of something else to write.”
And she almost does.
Almost.
November 9th:
She sits, and she writes. And she writes. And she writes. And she writes, and for once, Jazz and Savin are silent. Absent. Involved in their roles in the story, until --
A heavy silence overcame the Council, and Jazz had to fight the urge to bite his bottom lip. Had he said the wrong thing? Except he then felt Richard’s hand land on his shoulder, heavy and comforting all at once. “Callahan has a point,” Richard said, patting Jazz’s shoulder before his fingers slipped away.
A shiver rolled down Jazz’s spine at the touch, and he avoided the eyes of his fellow Councilors, wishing his muscles wouldn’t feel so tense.
She looks up and turns her head to the right. Jazz sits beside her, his focus not on her and his lip caught in his teeth. “You had a thing with the previous Emperor?” she asks, her eyes wide and her voice quiet.
“Of course he didn’t,” Savin snorts to her left. He shakes his head.
“Dude, Savin, of course he did --”
“He had one with Mitchel, yeah. But Emperor Casio? No,” Savin says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right, Jazz?”
Jazz nods his head. “Right. I mean, the man was attractive, but --”
“You think anyone older than you is attractive,” Savin teases. Jazz just scoffs and rolls his eyes.
Alicia tunes them out. They’re about to have one of their ridiculous arguments, anyway, and it won’t be helpful to the rest of the scene she’s writing now. Except the writing grinds to a halt, as the words no longer come to her.
It’s not until way later that evening, when she’s brewing coffee at work, that she understands why. Jazz stands just in her periphery, Emperor Casio wrapping his arms around him from behind, his lips on Jazz’s neck. The pained and guilt-laden expression on Jazz’s face says it all.
“Oh, you motherfucker,” she hisses out loud, banging the brewer down on the counter. Her coworker, Krysten, just raises an eyebrow at her, and Alicia’s face burns as she returns to the task at hand.
“Your characters again?” Krysten asks, a hint of laughter in her voice.
Alicia doesn’t say anything, but her face burns hotter as she nods her head.
November 30th:
She’s slogged through some forty thousand-some words by this point. Her eyes lock on the screen, burning with exhaustion. Her fingers hover over the keys. She has less than a thousand words to go. A thousand words, and she’ll win NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row, and --
“I didn’t tell him the whole truth, you know,” Jazz whispers to her right. His legs are tucked underneath him on the couch, his chin in the palm of his hand as he absently stares towards the bedroom. Savin is passed out in her bed, having worked from seven ‘til seven the night before. She wishes she could kick him out of it and take his place, but she can’t. Not yet. Not until she wins.
“I know,” she mutters, not even looking up from her screen. “I’m still fucking pissed at you about that.”
Jazz bites his lip and looks away.
She sighs and shakes her head, turning her attention back to the screen. “I expect better from you,” she explains, scrubbing her face with the palm of her hand. “Savin’s the one who usually lies to me, not you.”
“It is rather disappointing, is it not?” another voice asks. Alicia snaps her head to her left, noticing the man in a pinstripe suit casually leaning over the couch, a thin smirk on his face. “Jasper’s usually quite honest -- even disgustingly so -- and yet...”
“What do you want, Mitchel?” she barks, cutting him off. She doesn’t have time for this. She just wants to get some goddamn sleep, already.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mitchel asks, tweaking the knot of his tie as he walks around the back of the couch, fingers trailing along the edge of it. He gestures to Jazz. “Jasper is not the one to tell Bates the truth.”
“Of course -- you’re the one who tells him,” Alicia grumbles, frowning. She rubs her forehead. “Look, the only thing that matters to me is that Savin finds out the truth before ‘Gray Morning’ -- because that’d be really fucked up if Savin doesn’t know before he and Jazz get mar --” She cuts herself off, her stomach plummeting to the floor as realization sinks it.
She turns to glare at Jazz. “He doesn’t find out until ‘Gray Morning’?” she shrieks, throwing the netbook down and pushing herself off the couch, pacing in front of it. Another realization strikes her, causing her to stumble over her own two feet.
“This is why I needed to write this book, isn’t it?” she asks, staring at Jazz in disbelief. “I needed to write this -- this fucking piece of shit novel, because you couldn’t man up and tell Savin the truth? This is what breaks you two?” She throws her hands up in the air and turns on her heel. “That’s it, I’m done. Fucking DONE, I tell you. I quit. Y’all are fucking making me insane.”
She doesn’t make it very far, crashing into another body as she storms towards her bedroom. “What’s going on?” Savin asks, his voice thick with sleep. “Why’re you shouting? And what’s he doing here?” he continues, glaring in Mitchel’s direction. Mitchel just scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest.
“He lives here,” Alicia says, a crazed laugh escaping her. They all live here. Together. Probably for the rest of her life, and she can’t get rid of them. She gestures back over to where Jazz is sitting, wide-eyed and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “And ask your husband. He’s the one who’s been keeping shit from the both of us.”
She doesn’t look back as she slams the bedroom door behind her.
That is, until she sneaks out to retrieve her netbook, fingers pecking furiously at the keys while Jazz and Savin argue in the background, too enmeshed in a later part of their story to notice her. When she crosses the finish line of fifty thousand, she shuts the netbook down, lies down in her bed, and finally -- finally -- their voices disappear.
She vows never to do NaNoWriMo again.
Alicia would like everyone to know she is not legitimately crazy, but she does have a small colony of characters living in her head and sometimes it gets REAL DAMN LOUD, okay?