Finished.

One word: Huzzah. I know, its cheesy but hey I've just spent a month writing a novel that... well, it will be pretty cheesy too. So excuse the slightly geeky phrase as I utter it again: Huzzah! This time it's got an exclamation mark on the end because I feel extra exuberant.
I don't think many people will have the privilege of reading the novel. However, I managed to prove to myself and others that I could do it and it's not utter crap.
This past month has opened up a new literary frame of mind to me. Now, when I walk around town holding a banner and protesting against stupid laws; I think about it in a slightly different way. How would I express this on paper? If this life was my book what would I make happen now? As I listen to the rain pound on my roof my mind runs through all the ways of explaining precipitation falling from the sky. I recommend the experience to everyone who is suffering from creativity deficiency. Yeah, that's what NaNoWriMo is, a huge burst of creativity over one month. Anything goes, which is why in my book heaps of strange things occur. Like the day when I visited the doctor, I made my characters raid a pharmacy.
A big clap for Wikipedia and Dictionary.com I bet most NaNo peeps wouldn't be able to write it without them.
One thing that I found interesting however, was my improvement in spelling and punctuation. I composed my manuscript on google docs believing, at the beginning, that I wouldn't be able to have one computer available to me for the whole month. But I hijacked mum's lappy. Still though, I did it on google docs. They don't automatically capitalize or puncuate things, so my hands learned to do it automatically. Now, when I write an email to politicians complaining about stupid laws, I finish it and look back to find that I don't have to correct the puncuation.
Here is the little progress bar that turned a "delicious purple."



Now, I can sit here at my desk, one hand on the mouse and the other lovingly stroking my manuscript to my left. It's quite thick and I have to say, I am immensely proud of it. However, don't assume it is publishable. I still haven't actually re-read it. So don't hold your breath, I still haven't come up with a suitable pen name.

Another thing to distract me

I did the test. The Jane Austen personality test to be precise. Every person who has read two or more of her books must do this at least once before they die. Well, I've done it twice now... the first time I came out as Marianne Dashwood [that silly girl in Sense and Sensibility.] But that was only because I said that I played the piano.
However, I did it again just now and the result was much more satisfactory.

Going down hill from here!

What words can I use to explain it? I don't quite feel euphoria yet, but something close to it. Here are some good words: Glee, enjoyment, jocularity and exuberance. The reason for all these expensive words is that I've just reached 44,365 words. Here is a sweet little pic of the progress bar on my NaNoWriMo profile.

Apparently it turns a beautiful shade of purple when you reach 50,000. I can't wait.
Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Why on earth are you writing a blog when you only have a few thousand words left to write? Well, I have two reasons. The first is that it's already quarter past eleven and I can't write another thousand words and still remain sane.
The second is that I want to be able to look back on this experience. As well as you reading it, I want to be able to read this in a couple of months and be able to relive my experience when I almost reached 45,000. Think about it people, Fifty Thousand. That seems like fifty-very-long-thousand at the beginning. It seems like it's even longer in the middle when you are half way through and think you may have already finished your story. But at the point I'm at now the only word to explain it is: awesome. Yeah.
The thing I love is that it's my book. They are my characters and I can do what I like to them. There are no literary snobby "bourgeois" looking over my shoulder telling me off. Well, I wouldn't actually mind that so much because my novel would end up being publishable. But my point is that it's mine. All mine. I feel like Gollum. About ten thousand words ago I finally realized this point. "Hey!" I said to myself, "I can do anything in this novel. I mean, I can kill that character off if I want. My story doesn't have to follow the plot I outlined for it at the beginning!" Anything could happen. It's so exciting. I still don't know what's going to happen at the end but something is going to blow up.
I was just thinking about it, my novel is going to be really weird. Firstly because I kill people off in the must unusual manner. Secondly because their language and my description of the gory bits isn't quite realistic because I don't use much coarse language and I don't want to imagine a murder scene that much. There are plenty of other reasons why the book is going to be strange, but hey, that happens with everything I write.

Oh and another awesome thing. Here is my little progress thing... ah, its so exciting to see it rise every day! I'd just thought I'd share that anyway. Now I'd better go to bed. [Wow, this post was about four hundred and fifty words.]

Because it's still legal.

I arrived home at about 6pm shivering from cold. I wasn't cold when I was out, but when I got back it caught up with me, shivering up my spine.
I have had an overdose of political thoughts buzzing around my head today.
Yeah, I was at the A&P show trying to get people to sign the petition. You know, the one about that stupid smacking law that makes it illegal for parents to smack or use force for the purposes of correction. [ie picking the kid up to take him/her to time out.] Ok, its pretty much a rubbish law and everyone knows it. We've heard heaps of information about it and viewed all of those debates on TV. However, people still aren't sick of hearing about it. Heaps of people would come up and sign then go on to say that it should be legal to "give ya kid a smack on the bum." After stating that obvious fact they would go further to attack some politician [usually Helen Clark, strange]. Their criticism knew no bounds. While we felt obliged to keep our slightly violent or abusive comments to ourselves they would let them flow out. "We should have an effigy of Helen here so we can smack her." "It's the most ridiculous law they've passed yet." Usually some kind of "foul" language would be used to express their rage. Old ladies felt free to speak about their neighbour's terrorist kids and old men were able to spout forth their particular political ideas, perhaps proposing another petition to get rid of MMP. One guy cracked me up when he said; "If they tried to bring this law in back in world war two she would have been compared to Hitler." Godwin's law aye.
Ok, I'm not that awesome, I was only helping today. We were parked next door to the Green party funnily enough, they were the party who pretty much brought this law in. It was hilarious to watch them try to make people buy their $2 raffle tickets. Duh, I thought they already legalised stealing from the people of New Zealand earlier this year. They could just do it again instead of spending precious time trying to earn the money honestly.
I could rant on about this for ages, but I wont.
Oh yeah, Janette Fitzsimons was there. I saw her being interviewed in front of the Greens tent. It was a fantastic photo opportunity, but I resisted the urge and didn't even jump behind her so I could be on TV. Another petitioner asked her to sign, without realising who she was talking to. Apparently John Key was there too, but he didn't want to come and talk to us because we were just too scary. Yeah, have him for breakfast we would.
Many of the people who didn't sign's reason was that the politicians wouldn't listen. In fact, many of those who signed would say afterwards as they shrugged their shoulders; "like they are going to listen," or "it won't make any difference, they wont take any notice of it."
Wow, what does that say about people's attitude towards politicians? Members of parliament are supposed to be representing the people of New Zealand. It doesn't look like they are doing their job right. I say we sack them.

Oh, I've strayed from my intended topic again. I was going to say that all that stuff people said today about politicians and even our very presence there petitioning against them would be illegal if this law goes through. So pretty much by January next year we could be a nation of people with duct tape over our mouths. So much for democracy! If we don't have democracy then we have a dictatorship. No, not good. Not good at all. So? what to do? I don't know, but I would seriously like to give some of those idiots in that green carpeted room in Welly a kick in the bum. Arrgh! I'd better go, my head is starting to hurt thinking about all this nonsense they come up with. And get away with too!

11,675 words!

Yay! I'm 6 days into NaNoWriMo and I've already done 11,000 words out of 50,000. Celebration all round! I Actually, I don't know what to write next. I reckon this could be close to the part of the novel writing process that the veterans warn about. That part when you just want to quit. But thankfully I have told everyone about it, so giving up would be way too embarrassing. It's kind of strange how my own personality keeps coming out in my characters, displaying itself in different forms. The last paragraph I wrote featured a woman playing her heart out on the piano in this empty cathedral. Dude, I'd love to do that! Umm... and I keep having a go at politicians and different laws. Thats what the plot is based on so I will shut up now. If you ever read it you can find out all about it then. However, I will most likely hide it under my bed when I'm finished and pretend it never happened. I started out with a bunch of characters and a very vagiue idea of what my plot would be. My plan was to start writing and just see where my characters took me. It's serious fun, whenever I think of a new idea I get this little fluttering heart that says to me; "AAAHHHH! This is awesome! So exciting!" After that I feel like jumping up and down or dancing even though I can't dance. Yeah, good times.

This is an awesome cartoon I managed to upload even though we are cursed with slow internet for the week.