The Battle of Pride and Heart

The Battle of Pride and Heart

"It's over."

Carly stood frozen in place, as her mouth hung open in disbelief. She waited, in stunned silence, as her heart fell in pieces slowly to the ground. The pieces hit the floor, shattering into even smaller pieces, flying everywhere. Carly was sure the sound of her heart breaking was loud enough for him to hear from where he was standing a few feet away. Her pride fought for her to turn and quickly walk away with her head held high. She couldn't just leave without her heart, which was still stubbornly laying in sharp little fragments in front of his scuffed shoes. 

Hanging over her left shoulder, her pride yelled in her ear, "Wipe that stunned look off your face now and calmly leave before he thinks you’re an even bigger loser.”

Carly tried her best to listen and forced a casual look onto her face but couldn’t leave. What remained of her heart appeared near her right shoulder and told her in a soft voice, “You can’t leave without me. You have to fight to get me back. If you just leave me lying on the floor, it will take a very long time for me to grow back and be whole again.”

“What?” her pride cried out angrily. “Don’t listen to her. What does she know? It’s her fault for being broken in the first place. She knew it was a risk to fall for that boy. And now look at what happened! Like I predicted, he didn’t catch her and now she's laying broken on the floor. You should’ve listened to me.”

Carly stared down at her own shoes as her heart and pride battled against one another. In the end, her pride won the fight and Carly looked defiantly up at him. “Fine. If that’s what you want. We’re over,” she turned and attempted to look confident as she walked away. 

After being his girlfriend for eight months, her heart had fallen hard for him. She thought his heart had felt the same. They had both exchanged the L-word on many occasions but words meant nothing, if the heart didn't feel it. Hers did. And she knew then that his didn’t. That left the remainder of her heart to continue falling hard, until it hit the ground even harder. And it would be a long time before it would be strong enough to love again. 

He watched as Carly walked away. His own pride popped out to congratulate him. “I told you it was a good idea to get out of this relationship before she did. I told you she didn't care about you and wouldn’t care if you broke up with her. You should be happy that you didn’t let her completely break your heart.”

A few pieces of his heart crashed to the floor as Carly’s footsteps faded. It was too late to stop her. 

He heard a quiet murmuring and after a few moments, deciphered what the repeated noise was. He turned and started to leave the room, never glancing back once at his heart, which was spilling out onto the floor behind him as he walked. He was just about to shut the door behind him, to leave with only one small piece of his heart remaining, when he heard the quiet murmuring of his heart again. “You idiot,” it said one last time before the door closed shut behind him. 

- Written by me, a million years ago

Another Short Goodbye

Goodbye because I need to spend less time on blogger.

Not for long. Just a month. A month can seem kind of long. 

Six hours from now National Novel Writing Month officially starts for me. Midnight. November 1st. 

Gone are the days when I could spend hours aimlessly creeping facebook and reading blogs. It's officially time to start spending all my free time writing. My novel won't write itself. Actually, it kind of did. 

I know I mentioned my story idea before, and offered to let people read it. The whole idea has changed. 

I am now going to be writing a story I've previously written, from scratch. Exact same idea, characters, scenes, but written completely new, with no looking at the previously written story. 

The first draft was 36,081 words. Many scenes are lame need to be cut out and rewritten. 

It will be a challenge, and also very fun to re-write the story. It is one of very few stories that I've actually written from beginning to end, and they're all from my high school years at best. It is definitely not good writing. 

The fun part will be actually taking my stories and making them better. Readable. I am very excited to start. 

Now, time to outline and research a bit. 

PS: If someone would suggest a great, unique name for a coffee shop, it would help out a lot. 

The Nano Countdown is On

There are 9.. NINE.. days left until NaNoWriMo officially starts. I've blubbered about this before, a few days ago, and last year, but I am doing it this year. And I am telling everyone, because really, the more people you tell, the bigger loser you look like when you fail, right? So you guys need to keep me in line. 

This is me here. You can spy on me there to make sure I'm actually writing, when I'm not droning on about it in here.

This is my opening line: "Heartbreak, he was sure, was not supposed to feel like this." I adopted it from one of the NaNoWriMo forums. 

"After a couple of mishaps with online dating, Noah Van Hagan gets a little tired of the scene. Deciding he would rather have fun with online dating, than suffer through it, he purposely acts the 'crazy' part. Insert Maddy Cooper documenting his every shananigan, and his ex, Kenley Morris, wanting in on the fun, and the whole game gets too complicated, too quick."

I'm not sure where it came from. But I've been creeping the forums a lot, getting ideas, leaving questions and getting helpful answers (about film school, online dating stories). I'm putting in the work this year and I'm going to rock it. 

So... who wants to be the first to read my literary train wreck in December?