The Nobodies Album

It's late and even though I'm off from work tomorrow I'm ready for bed. Even so, I had to update quickly because I'm feeling so accomplished and I wanted to share.

I'm a member of GoodReads.com and one neat thing that they do is having drawings to give away Advance Reading Copies of upcoming books. Well, since it was obvious from my profile that I was a lover of the works of Carolyn Parkhurst, I was selected to receive an ARC of her upcoming novel, The Nobodies Album. When I received the book, I also received a letter telling me that the publishing group was running a contest for readers to rewrite the ending of the novel in 500 words or less. Since the novel centers around the idea of a author rewriting the endings of her novels, I thought I was a pretty neat contest. Plus 500 words would be incredibly easy to bang out. The prizes aren't anything fabulous, but the grand prize is a $400 Bose iPod Sound Dock and there are are four runner up prizes of $50 iTunes gift cards.

Anyway, fast forward to tonight. The contest deadline is at midnight. Only five entries to the contest have been posted, so the odds are looking good. But it's a quarter after ten and I'm sleepy, so I say to Frank, "Eh, I don't think I'm going to do that writing contest after all. I have less than two hours and I don't know, I just don't feel like it." Usually Frank doesn't give me a hard time about stuff like this, but tonight he insisted, "No! You have to do this! I believe in you!"

Alright, I know that last line is exceedingly corny and I'm pretty sure he just wanted to play Dante's Inferno on the PS3 in peace for a couple of hours while I worked. But nevertheless, what he said was enough to send me grumbling to my office where in a little over an hour I had written 475 words that I was extremely proud of. I posted my entry with 45 minutes to spare and I'll know by the end of the week if it was good enough to win a prize. But honestly, I don't care if I win anything or not, just meeting a deadline and writing something that I felt was quality gave me a great boost that I needed.

Now if only I had managed to get a workout in today ...