Another NaNoWriMo Complete!

Another NaNoWriMo complete! I know that some people do not understand the amazing feat of this, but I have once again written 50,000 words in the month of November. I know that that doesn't seem like a lot at the moment, but there have been multiple times that I just wanted to stop. However, I have made it through. I have continued onward. I have achieved what I sometimes doubted I would. I have won!

I love my characters deeply by now, and though I must admit I have written some bone fide garbage this month, I feel I have gotten the beginnings on paper, and I have acheived some gems this month.

The things I'm most proud of this month (those moments when I could swear that some amazing writer has come to me... and I'm not writing it) are as follows (sorry if it's stuck up to share my favorite parts of my own writing):

1. "It was surprising to me that Andros Andropos would make this opening up of his soul—he was a Greek Orthodox! The Methodists were seen as strange enough to us and I’d never even met a Greek Orthodox before. We didn’t really take kindly to people who weren’t Catholic. I’ve already explained that my town was not exactly the type of town that one would look at as a model of the future. We were usually significantly behind. So, it is with our acceptance of other religions."

2. "Yeah, I’d imagine that your head hurts like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t know whether or not it’s a demonstration of how ‘unmanly’ I am, but I’ve never actually been knocked unconscious."

3. "'Can you count backwards from 100 by sevens?'
Alexandre took a deep breath, opening his eyes a little bit, but not very much at all, '100, 97…no 93…86, 78…no 79…74…68…59…'
'Stop,' Dr. Depierre instructed.'No you can’t.'
'So?' I spoke up, 'I don’t think I could count backwards from 100 by sevens either and I haven’t been hit by anything.'"

4."There are records of people who don’t actually ever recover from all of the effects, but it’s not exactly common. So, we’ll pretend it’s not going to happen and if it happens then we’ll deal with it.”

5."Perhaps you have to be French to notice, but did you know that there are no sufficiently masculine feminine names that exist in French culture. We have more than our fair share of masculine names that to an outsider would appear ridiculously feminine: Michel, Daniel, René, Camille—we’ve even named some Jean-Marie! But all our girl’s names are so ridiculously feminine as well."

6."Well, just tell me which is the opposite, and which is the adjacent,' he insisted.
I huffed quickly before grabbing my pencil and turning back to the triangle on his paper. 'Okay, which angle?'
'What do you mean which angle? Can’t you just say about the triangle as a whole?'
I shook my head. Christophe was sometimes a little frustrating. 'It’s all relative, Christophe.'"

7."With World War I, the St. Martins had all hoped that Edouard Peuxperdeau would somehow die for his country, and the Peuxperdeaus had hoped the same for Christian St. Martin"

8."I notice that people often tend to forget that in France, we don’t actually eat frog legs all the time. We do have some sense of taste. Alright, stereotypically, I must admit, I have had frog legs, and I must admit, I actually do have something of a liking for them. The one thing I must say to defend myself is that escargot is kind of not really a Breton thing."

9."Jean Gâteaux was frightening, and there were many rumors about what he really waSome speculated that he was a spy for the Germans—waiting for the day when Germany would again unleash its fire upon the people of France. There were others who speculated he was a spy for the only body that French people held as more evil than Germany. And that was Satan. Others, especially those who were interested in the old heathen traditions that Bretagne’s history was so richly decorated with, felt that he was a werewolf or other such creature. Something that creeped and bumped in the night."

10."'Remember the Great Peuxperdeau Slaying of 1786?'

Mireille was quick to add, 'We Peuxperdeaus call it the Cock Night Massacre of 1786.'"

11."'Geneviève, do you swear by the saints in the heavens—by your patron saint, Ste. Geneviève—that you will not tell a soul about Mireille and myself until we have been able to find some way that we can reveal this without starting open war?'...I slowly nodded my head, though it was reluctantly. 'Okay,' Alexandre said...'And that goes exactly the same for you too, Jenny.Do you also swear by all the saints…wait are you even Catholic?'
'No,' Jenny admitted.“I think I'm kind of Episcopalian, but not really.'...'All right,' Alexandre continued, 'All the same, do you promise, in what ever sincere way that you Americans promise, to not tell anyone about this?'"

12.“Humbert Peuxperdeau has done the lowest, slimiest thing that I would have ever thought a man would do. And to think I thought that he had slunk as low as he could by just breathing!”

13."However, unfortunately, the very thing that has created justice—the law—has also created mayhem. Unfortunately, the way that our law system works these days, anything is possible. Provided you have a good lawyer. And Peuxperdeau does.”

14."We were as helpless in that court as the Peuxperdeaus and St. Martins had been back in the first revolution when we all started denouncing each other as aristocrats and aristocrat sympathizers like it was some sort of a sick sport (Because, after all, it really kind of was)."

15."'Well, I don’t know why you think that it’s such a crime for us to want to know what’s going on!' Brigitte yelled back to him. Brigitte always the most hotheaded.
'Why is it a crime?' Christian continued.'You ask me why it’s such a crime? I’ll tell you why it’s such a crime. It is such a crime because we have approximately four days before we have to have a defense of some kind, and though I have the basic skeleton for one, there is no way that if you all do not stop bothering me, I can have a solid line of defense.That’s just the way that it goes!'
'Maybe if you stopped yelling at us and just did it, you’d have a little more success,' Brigitte continued.
'I wasn’t yelling until you bothered me,' Christian defended himself. 'Once you started bothering me, then I needed to get my point across of why I needed to be left alone, because you weren’t listening. In order to get your attention, it was necessary for me to yell.'
'You seem to be successful enough at formulating a defense as to why you’re bad at making defenses. Why don’t you make a defense that will actually help us?'
'I never defended why I was bad at making defenses. Because I never said that. I am just bad at making defenses that have no evidence nor counterevidence. There is a certain level of difficulty in making a defense for something that should have never been a court case in the first place, and I am facing that dilemma. And I’ve never even been to law school!'”

So, there are my favorite parts. :-) Read if you choose.