WINNER!!!

Today, being the 25th of November, it is the first day you can validate your novel. You know, go to the NaNoWriMo website and use their word count validater to prove you actually wrote at least 50,000 words. Well, I finished writing my novel Cycle a couple of weeks ago, on the 12th actually, so bright and early this morning I proved my rapid writing skills and won. At first I guess I accidentally pasted my novel twice, so it said my novel had 100,800 words. While that is a much more impressive figure, I changed it. My writer's honor would not have stood for such a thing. Such a dishonest abomination would surly have prevented me from entering the writer's guild if it was ever discovered. 

You can see that I have changed the participant picture to a winner's picture. Over there, to your right. 

As of yet that is the only goody I get, come December 5th I will achieve far more, hopefully including two free printed copies of my book from Create-A-Space, which I will be able to do for once because I have cover this year.

And to conclude this post, here is a sneak peak to my novel. 

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Spring

1

The first thing I was ever aware of was the bright light. For a moment, that was all that I thought life was. Before that moment my mind had taken no notice of the world around me, as if I was asleep. I am not sure if when I woke up the sun was the first thing I saw, or if it was the sun that woke me up.

Then I was aware of my legs, my body, and my wings. I could feel the ground underneath my feet as crawled up. I could feel warmth wrapping me up, and somehow I knew it was the same thing as the light.

My vision cleared, and I could see the world around me. I could see the dirt that clung to my damp skin. My body felt strange, and I realized that I was breathing. In and out in huge, desperate shudders, my entire body twitching.

My wings ached, the muscles cramping. I tried to move them, but they were shriveled up and would not be moved. With the warm light they began to dry and grow. As they grew, it became easier to move them.

I carefully stood up, staring at the ground that was churned up around me. Now I wonder why it did not occur to me to wonder how I had suddenly ended up there. I guess since I had never had any existence to fall back on, it did not occur to me to wonder about how, and why, and what. At that moment, perhaps the only moment ever, I could simply let things be.

I felt vibrations in the air, and as I looked around I saw others, once again, I did not wonder where they had come from, they simply were. Some were up walking around, others still knelt on the ground, their shriveled wings drying in the sun. Others, small groups, stood close together, their antennae touching. A few were digging themselves up from the dirt and I realized that was what I had done. I had come from the dirt. That is why the light had hit me. Under the dirt the light must be hidden. Then I asked my first question.

Why did I dig? How did I know there would be this wonderful sun that felt so good? How had I known to crawl my way into existence, if I had not been aware before?

Some of the bugs were flapping their wings so quickly they were a blur, and this sent them a few inches off the ground. I ran a hand along the edge of one of my own wings. I asked another questions.

Can I do that?

For several moments I stood there and watched the others doing things. They walked, and ran, and flew. Some found others right away and just stood there, staring at each other. Often they would get excited. It was too much to take in. I was curious. Now the questions bounced in my head nonstop. Questions of how and why, and what, and who, and where, and all the questions a newly hatched insect could ask. I did none of the things I saw the others doing. Instead I put those things in the back of my mind, making a list of all the things I wanted to try, and what order I wanted to try them.

And then, I felt something. You should have experience this too by now, but I heard a voice. "Hey, watch out!" The order to watch out, with an intense suggestion to move out of the way of another about to stumble into me.

I jerked on my shaking legs. They were still weak and I fell into the dirt. On instinct, my wings flapped a couple of times, but my face was already buried in the dirt. The bug that would have run into me instead tripped over my legs and fell into the dirt as well.

"Sorry," he said, pushing himself off. "I seem to be a klutz."

I rolled over to look at him, but I did not get up. At a glance I could tell that this one was a bit bigger than me, but his wings smaller. Maybe he had been too busy stumbling about to dry them out. His face was still covered with dirt and I tried to figure out how to tell him this. I knew he had told me sorry, but I could not work out how he had done it.

"I'm sorry I upset you," he said, offering a hand. In those words he spoke to my mind there was also the offer to take his hand and let him help me up.

Dear reader, I am sorry as well if this is cumbersome for you to read. Spoken language is so much easier than this written language. You do not need to use so many words to say the same thing. Just a few and then the feelings behind them. No real words at all, as the thought is just put from one mind into the other. While this written language is amazing, I can speak to you many years from now, it does have limitations. Anyway, back to my story.

I tried to put my thoughts into his head. I was not upset. I was confused. I wanted to let him know this, but I did not know how. I took his hand, thinking I am not upset, I am not upset, in his direction. He did not seem to hear me.

Zip, zip. "Is he alright?" asked another bug. He stumbled as he landed. He had been flying, higher and faster than I had seen any of the others fly before. Looking back his landing had been awkward, but at the time it was the most graceful thing I had ever seen. I tried telling him so, but he just looked at me in concern.

"I don't know," said the stumbling, awkward one. "He won't say anything. He just keeps looking at me."

The flying one brushed the dirt off my face, and I flinched away and rubbed the dirt off myself.

This is getting confusing, having so many people to keep track of. We do not have names for ourselves. A tree is just a tree no matter what, so the same set of characters are always for a tree. But each person is different and needs a different name. We call each other by our feelings for them and what they are. What I called the flying one is not what someone else called the flying one, and what we call each other changes over time, so I feel I cannot name them now. But I must for this story to make any sense, so I will.

The strong stumbling one is named Solts, and the other is named Shatoe.

"You need to be more careful," Shatoe lectured Solts.

"I was trying to run," Solts argued. "It's not my fault he just stood there like a stick."

"I'm not a stick!" I screamed, and suddenly I had done it. I had done the thing where I could speak, and both Solts and Shatoe turned their gaze onto me. I could feel their surprise in my mind, and the fact they were annoyed, and even hear traces of their other thoughts.

"I um," I was embarrassed then, but I found it easy to hide the feelings I did not want them to see, and rather convey only the meanings I wanted to. "I mean, I'm sorry, I just now figured out how to speak."

"You had to figure it out?" Solts asked. Perhaps if it had been someone else I would have been upset at the question, but Solts meant no disrespect. It must have come to him without thinking, like how I had known without thinking to come out into the sun.

Shatoe placed his hands at his abdomen and swiveled it to one side. "I can't believe you just said that!" he cried at Solts. He turned his attention to me and dropped his arms to his side. "I am sooo sorry he is acting like this."

For some reason, Shatoe was embarrassed by the way Solts was acting, but I could not figure out why. Shatoe had done everything he could to help me, and Solts was not even being mean spirited. I did my best to convey this to Shatoe, but he still did not seem to understand me.

"Arrg," Solts growled. "What is going on?" Along with the question, I could tell that Solts was confused and trying to figure something out. He could only hear Shatoe speaking, not me, so to him it sounded like Shatoe was talking to himself.

"I guess, I'm sorry, I was just speaking to Shatoe so only gave my words to him," I explained, making sure this time that I spoke in such a way they both could hear.

"You can do that?" Solts asked in amazement. "How do you do that?"

"You mean you can't just do it?" I responded jocularly.

Solts blinked large eyes at me. “No. Should I have?” he asked in all sincerity.

Shatoe laughed, at my joke and the way Solts had responded. He seemed to remember himself, and he grabbed his antennae with a guilty hunch to his shoulders.

"It's like we're opposite," I said out loud. "You have trouble keeping what you are saying to yourselves, but I need to work at speaking. It is actually easier to speak to one person. It takes less concentration for me to speak to only one of you."

"Very, very interesting," Shatoe commented, his wings flapping quickly, but not so quickly they pushed him off the ground. Somehow, despite the literal words he had said, the thoughts behind those words communicated that he actually meant the opposite. I could feel that his mind was wandering. Our communication was not interesting enough to hold his attention, and his mind began to think about being up high in the air again.

"I know," Solts declared, jumping. "We should explore, but together."

For several moment Shatoe tried to teach Solts and me how to fly, but the best we could manage was a few inches straight up before we crashed to the ground. We all laughed as Solts and I kept falling down. Shatoe's sounds of joy were somewhat different from Solts. It was fast and energetic, like his zipping through the air.

We decided to walk, even though it was slower than flying would have been, supposing that Solts and I had actually been able to fly at all.

All around us was bright green grass that came up to our abdomen. It tickled when it brushed my skin. Brightly colored flowers sprung from the ground, and everything smelled like the color green. Not too far from where I had hatched was a stream. This stream made a delightful sound. It was a sound that came from vibrations in the air as opposed to the sounds of a voice, which was in the mind, but it still reminded me of my own sound of joy. It skipped and burbled along, darting over smooth stones. 

The stream pooled out into a pond, and there stopped. I'm not sure where the water went after that. Several of the others were there, looking at the water with curiosity and wonder. The pond was shaded by a tree that stood near it. It was a grand tree, reaching high into the brilliant sky. The dark brown branches and the bright green leaves made the colors and textures dance in a beautiful way whenever a breeze would brush by.

For a long while this was our home.