As the title says, this year I decided to take the plunge, though three days late, and start my second attempt at writing 50,000 words in November.

Though still slightly behind everyone else, (currently at 13,821) I'm plugging along and simply bursting to tell someone about what is practically my child at this point.

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Summary:

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Excerpt:

He stared at me in disbelief. “Hi?” he asked. “You were just screaming bloody murder. What was that about?”

Now the rest of my senses came to me. My heart really was pounding out of my chest, and my clothes were soaked in a cold sweat. “Oh,” I murmured, swallowing hard. “N-nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Behind me, the trill of a bird sounded in the windowsill, announcing it was very, very early morning. The breeze blew in through that window and stirred through Sebastian’s hair, also causing a branch to tap against the side of the house, imitating to the sleepy mind, footsteps. “It’s alright. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.” I flushed after realizing the simple things that had turned to horrors for me, not wanting him to know.

“Sleep? After that? I doubt anyone is asleep after how loud you were screeching. You’ll be lucky if we don’t get a squad of representatives checking this place out cause somebody- or the whole block- got spooked.” I stiffened. No, no!

“They can’t do that!” I cried, unable to hide the panic that began to clasp its ugly fingers around me. He tilted his head. “And why not? Someone was screaming for help, that obviously means someone wants help.”

“No! I don’t want help, I want to be left alone! Leave me alone! All of you!” I cried out.

He tilted his head and studied me. “Do you?” he asked quietly after some time. “Do you want to be left alone? Or is it your cries, not the moans of a lonely ghost that haunt this hill at night? We’ve all heard them, and we’ve all assumed it was just the wind. But is it you?”

I looked away sharply, heat creeping up my cheeks. “No!” I denied vehemently. Too harshly, I suppose. He didn’t believe it for a second.

“You’re scared,” he prodded. I refused to meet his gaze. “You’re alone and you aren’t doing well with that.”

Now I glared at him, hiding the terror that built up inside me. He was hitting too close to home for my liking, again. I didn’t want him to know everything he just revealed so accurately. It wasn’t safe. Rather, it was a threat and a risk I wouldn’t take.

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Genre:

Welp, basically everything. It's a dystopian(ish) fantasy romance with a dash of adventure and thrill.

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I would absolutely adore title suggestions. I'm currently out of ideas.

Some criticism is appreciated! However, please don't be too harsh just yet! After NaNo ends I will be taking what I wrote, chopping it up and duct taping it back together, and that is when I will be needing people with flamethrowers and scissors to tell me what's wrong with the book. For now however, I am focusing on just writing, since if I worry too hard about plot or grammar I lose interest and just stop. Soon though, soon we will nitpick over every little detail and every time I accidentally say "there was".

Best of luck! I'm "nanoing" too and it's going very very slowly. I've already bounced between the stories I'm writing a few times.

This seems very interesting! Would love to read it when you're done ^^

Thanks! I wish you luck too, it's a challenge! I was tempted to bounce to a new story a few days ago, but I made myself keep on with my current plot, and I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's just hard to push off the anxiety that I'm putting hours and hours of work into something that might not even be worth it in the end. But I'm trying to focus on the ride, rather than the destination.

Yes! Towards the end I *may* post a link to the doc, but I'm not sure yet.

I need people's quick opinions. I'm stuck on whether my female protagonist should be horrified that he heard what she was saying and run away, leaving him lonely silently crying for her to come back, or if she should realize he can hear her and stay, keeping him company. I can't decide lol

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Sebastian

Time passed dreadfully slowly in this dark stupor. I couldn’t tell if I was conscious, or if this was what being dead was like. I could see nothing, feel nothing, do nothing. I could think, but that wasn’t helpful. Sometimes I could hear things and that only made me all the more anxious. For the voices I heard were just that- voices. More than one. What could that mean to me? Were we trapped? Would I wake up back at the Institution? Only time would tell.

Eventually I felt my sense of feeling returning, so slowly. I could feel little parts of me at a time, feel things around me. I could feel the tips of my fingers first, then warmth on my cheeks. My feet thawed next, then feeling spread out from there. I still could hardly move though. My hearing was starting to return, but again slowly.

Nothing felt like progress until I felt a soft touch- a warm, small hand clasping over mine. That touch almost entirely wiped my anxiety away. Was it her? Was she safe? Her hand squeezed around mine, and a moment later I felt her fingertips brush delicately over my forehead, through my hair.

“Wake up, Sebastian,” That voice. I could feel the shudder pass through me. Did she feel it too? Her hand clasped tighter, but not unpleasantly. “Please.” Soft, quiet. Pleading. I want to! I can hear you! I want so badly to wake up! “We’re free. We made it. Please wake up. See for yourself.”

Free? That couldn’t be possible. Was it? She let out the softest of sighs, and I could feel her hand slipping from mine. No!

“This is dumb,” she sighed out softly, to herself I assumed. “You can’t hear me. I don’t know why I try.” Her hand left my hair, and I wanted to groan. Why did you stop? “You know, for all the scrapes you get into, you’re not all bad to have around,” she murmured.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t tell if I had blushed or not. I’m sure if she knew I could hear her, she’d have never said that.

Silence, and another sigh. “Just get well soon, please,” she murmured, and her hand slowly began to unclasp, slip away from mine. No! I wanted to cry out. No, please don’t! In a desperate attempt to keep her presence, I strained with all the strength I had to do something. With more work than it should have taken, my hand managed to clasp around her fingers as they brushed over my palm, almost too late. She gasped, loud enough I didn’t have to strain to hear it.

Then,

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That's the excerpt that I'm writing right now. Either proceed to heartbreak or make it a little sappy?

I always find it's best to write the title after you write the story. Otherwise, you're writing the story for the title, where you should write the story for the story.

Personally, I find it a lot harder writing in the first person because you're tied only to that specific character, and the word 'I' ends up repeating itself way more than it should, in a way making the writing feel selfish. I dunno how to explain it, but maybe try to re-word some of those sentences if you can?

The descriptive writing is great, though. I love it!

Just a few suggestions, dunno if they make sense at all haha

Enjoy your writing, I'd love to read it all afterwards :)

Thanks! Yeah, I've heard the title thing before somewhere and I've been avoiding titling it, but the temp title on my nano profile had been annoying me.

I'm actually switching the POV (chapter breaks,not just randomly) between my two main characters, but yeah I see what you're saying.its just how I started it, I might completely reword and rewrite once I get to the editing phase too.