I've said countless times that I've never really written a full length novel. I've written a fanfiction story that was crazy long and could have been a novel, but I never felt that I've ever really conquered something to call a novel.
Then I started going through my writing stuff. I found my old story, the one that I considered my baby for a couple years called
Always a Day Late and a Dollar Short.
It's a novel.
A finished novel.
How could I forget that I've actually written a novel? Okay, sure, there is maybe a couple chapters missing towards the end that really tie the whole thing up, but whatever - it's a novel. Flipping through this extremely long hot mess, I remembered exactly how I felt the night I started this story. I was 19, chain smoking, and pissed off at the people above me who wouldn't stop stomping around my head. My story even opens up with my hatred for those jerkfaces:
It amazed me how big of assholes the people above me were.
I dove in a little more about this girl having this horribly massive chaotic morning (much like the ones I usually had back then). After I wrote a couple pages, I remember feeling so interested in what this girl was all about. What was her name? What was she like? Why was she important? While typing away and listening to my favorite rock station: Q102, "Serenity" by Godsmack came on and I knew that was her name. What she was all about, I found out as I wrote her.
I even gave this novel so nice little chapter titles which I don't think anyone does anymore, but here are a few samples:
Beer and Waffles
That One Perfect Coffee Mug
It's Just Eww!
Oh, Those Awkward Moments
Break-Ups & Banana Ice Cream
It Wasn't a Love Song, Was It?
Tis' the Season to be Crappy
The story goes on about how Serenity has this hot new neighbor named Jackson, who is in a rock band because who doesn't want to run smack dab into a hot rocker named Jackson in their hallway? Serenity has five awesome friends - Jillian (the bitch), Hannah (the mother hen), Candy (the stripper), Chalice (the hopeless romantic), and Paige (the best guy friend who is total pothead and claim to fame was lighting his own arse on fire - what? I never said this was a mature book).
Serenity was much like me when I developed her just a bit more outgoing. She had no clue what to do with her life, she was kind of bitchy, she chain-smoked, and ate banana ice cream by the tub fulls. (She never gained weight though because that's so realistic and all.) She worked at a crappy job, and devoted most of her life to friends. One day she catches a break after getting fired and lands this nice little gig at a crappy television station where things kind of take off.
She also develops a relationship with an old fling, Gabe aka Mr. Wham-Bam-Thank-Ya-Ma'am, while still having a big thing for hot rocker Jackson who always has a big thing for her but just got out of this crummy relationship, blah, blah, blah. They also get into a fist fight once over her because those things just HAVE to happen when you have a love triangle. There's a lot of immature humor in this book with lots of nights where someone is getting drunk. Jillian, who may curse worse than a sailor, informs her she can never have a real relationship with Mr. Wham-Bam-Thank-Ya-Ma'am, but also thinks Jackson is a straight up douche for never making a move. But what does Jillian really know? She ends up getting knocked up by Paige, who she pretty much hates and still hates throughout the whole novel.
The whole thing ends with Serenity about to marry Gabe, but hears Johnny Cash singing about going back to Jackson, she takes it as a sign, jumps out the church window, runs home to tell Jackson he was right all along when he told her she shouldn't get married only to find out he already left for California to pursue his rock star career. So what does she have left? Herself and finding out who she really is.
What? I never said this was a love story.
Anyways, back to my point of this post. I wrote a novel once. Looking back over it, it really is kind of horrible. It has more dialogue than description. I'm not really for sure what the plot is most of the time. There is no such thing as correction grammar in this thing. I could always go back through it, shape it up, but I don't want to. I like it just the way it is. This reminder that this is why I love to write. I spent so many nights in my little one-bedroom apartment, chain-smoking, drinking too much Pepsi into the wee hours of the morning, and pounding away at my keyboard. (And sometimes threatening to throw my computer through the window if it performed another illegal operation because every time it did that most of what I had written would vanish.)
So basically my name is Amber. I love to write. I usually don't finish most of the stories that I start, but I have written a novel. It may be complete suckage, but I wrote it. And I plan on writing many more in the near future. Hopefully with not a lot of suckage, but we'll see what happens.
