NaNoWriMo 2004

This was the first year I jumped into the craziness that is NaNoWriMo. Why? I don’t know why; I just felt like it. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish up to 50,000 words on my first year because of schoolwork, but I managed to finish my first “novel” around March of 2005.

Excerpt from Chapter 7 – click here!
Word Count: 52,374
Pages: 94 pages (MS Word, font size 12, Garamond, single spaced, regular margins)
Summary:

Hope Torres lived a normal life, one that revolves around friends, school, extracurricular activities and trips she takes for her tourism class. Her normal life changes so suddenly with a casual mention and accidental meeting of Paul. Paul steps into Hope’s life and turns it upside down so silently that she suddenly found herself struggling with strange emotions she doesn’t want to deal with, denial, brewing friendship issues and bouts of loneliness about her singlehood. Hope wishes for her life to become normal again — but is a single wish on a shooting star enough to make things okay again?¹

Personally, when I first wrote this, I liked it very much because it was based on real life experiences². It’s actually the long version of Shooting Star, and the scene described in the short story can actually be read there too. Reading it again, however, makes me realize how emo this story is. Haha, but you’d have to excuse me for that, this is my first time to write a novel, so it’s got to be corny. :P

Some interesting facts about Shooting Stars:

• I have never been to Boracay, but the story ends in Boracay. :P How cool is that? Not really, because I couldn’t grasp how Boracay really is. I mostly painted a picture of it being somewhat of a private spot, but in reality, it couldn’t be because my characters took a trip there during the summer.
• The ending feels kind of rushed, because I sort of rushed it. I wish I could explain in detail the beauty of Aklan, but I couldn’t because I’ve never been there. Maybe if I would be given the chance to go there I’d be able to describe it.
• November 2004 ended with this novel at around 33K words. Sad that I didn’t get to finish it on time.
• One of the reasons why I didn’t get to finish this is that I lost my main “inspiration” for the novel somewhere in the middle of November. That’s actually a happy thing for me, but I struggled with writing this one because of that.
• About 50-60% of this novel is actually true. :P
• Songs most played while writing this novel are Bakit Part 1 and Bakit Part 2 by Mayonnaise, a local band, which my friends introduced to me while I was writing it. I also listened a lot to Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney and Huwag na Huwag Mo Sasabihin by Kitchie Nadal.

Anyway, I’ve got an excerpt of the novel right here. If you’re interested to read this entire thing, drop me a line. :)

1. Okay that summary sucks, man. So cheesy. Note that this story isn’t magical at all, it’s actually a lot emo that if I read it too much, I feel like puking. :P [«]
2. If you knew me real well back in college, then you probably know what this story is all about [«]