A Fictionalized Documentary of the Making Of Book I: Boulversement

58 pages. 1334 lines. 16,062 words. 90,583 characters (with spaces). Only 40 hours. A gargantuan task, so great that many even considered it impossible. But it was done. Barring food, drink, and minimal sleep for an entire week, a single student, whom we will call Nation in this tale, rose up to the challenge, and conquered it. This is the tale of how it was all done.

It was just a typical, 6^th period class at Westmoor High School. A group of 20 students came in as the bell rung, sitting themselves at their assigned seats. Little did they know that one fateful period would change their lives forever. The exalted teacher, Mrs. Night, strode into the room, a hint of malice in her eyes. For in that period, Mrs. Night unleashed the dreaded... [pause for climatic buildup] ... MYTH STORY ASSIGNMENT!!! [Thum-thum-thumm] upon her students, giving them a deadline of approximately two weeks.

After the period, nineteen of the students walked out, completely shocked and in panic. But the one student named Nation stepped out arrogantly, his mind not on the assignment at all. This angered the Gods of Literature greatly; a mere mortal student who didn’t properly respect and fear their homework. They conjured an evil prophecy against Nation, citing that he would not be able to complete his story easily, and instead must write a tale which spanned the length of the aforementioned specifications (at the top of this myth).

While all the others were hard at work on their myths, Nation only continued to play around, not even starting his myth until 6 days before the assignment was due. Once he started, however, he simply could not stop writing, and he continued until nightfall, finishing the first 8 pages of his story.

The very next day, Nation had a sudden urge to wake up, at 5 o’ clock AM in the morning, and from then until 5 o’ clock PM in the evening, Nation typed away on his computer, completing another 13 pages.

Nation was making amazing progress, faster than any normal human could. But his proficiency came at a price, for the Gods of Literature had driven Nation so hard that he had gone without food or drink, and had slept only 9 hours collectively the last two nights. He had entered an entirely different dimension in his mind, and his lust for writing only grew stronger, disrupting his normal habits.

But one Goddess of Literature, Lingwa, saw the cruel games that the other gods were playing on the mortal, and took pity on Nation. She made a vow that Nation would complete his myth on time, and set out to do everything in her power to help him reach this goal.

First, she took a bucket of ice-cold water, levitated it, and poured it over the entranced Nation. The student immediately snapped out of his trance.

“What am I doing here? And what is all of this stuff on my computer?” said Nation, awaking to find 21 pages of text on his computer, of which he had no recollection of typing.

Another God of Literature, Lingwo, was the brother of Lingwa. He always liked to tease his younger sister and foil her plans, and once he spotted Lingwa helping the mortal, he could not keep himself from meddling in the affairs.

Suddenly, in a flash of smoke, Lingwo appeared, as a tiny little god, on Nation’s right shoulder.

“Hey man! It’s your myth story, and it’s due in just 5 days, so you better start typing!” advised Lingwo.

Then, all of a sudden, Lingwa appeared on Nation’s other shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him Nation! He’s just trying to trick you! Delete all of this junk, and write a much smaller, more manageable story,” said Lingwa.

“Ahhh!!!!!!! Strange voices in my head!!!!!!!!! Get out!!! Get out!!!” screamed Nation, hitting his head. His hand accidentally slipped, and it deleted all of the words on the screen.

“Ha!” exclaimed Lingwa, “He deleted the myth. I win this time!” Triumphantly, Lingwa disappeared from Nation’s shoulder in a puff of smoke.

Lingwo then jumped down from Nation’s shoulder, tapped the ctrl and z keys, and then disappeared also. With the voices gone, Nation now stared at the screen, drawing in the words. After he had reviewed all that he had written, Nation continued with the story, writing deep into the night. At 2 o’ clock in the morning, Nation surpassed the 68,643 character (with spaces) mark, journeying into lands of literature never yet ventured into by man.

He was forced to sleep for four hours, but immediately when he awoke, he logged back onto his computer, only to find that all of the characters’ names had been erased, leaving behind blank underscores. Nation had to find new names, and fast, if he was to complete the story by Friday.

He first took the names which he had drew from his expansive fantasy and mythical lore, like Jaheira and Corran. But the main characters, the helpful goddess, the hero’s sidekick, and the hero herself he could not think of a name that suited them. Because of Lingwa’s urging, a dear friend of Nation’s, we’ll call her Theziree, phoned him suddenly and unexpectedly. As Nation talked to her, he realized that she was perfect for the part of the goddess, because she was always helping others. Nation then took her name, switched the order of the letters backward, and put the new word as the name of the goddess. Deciding that he wanted to be in the story, Nation decided to use his own name for the sidekick. He changed some of the letters to make the name less obvious, and then inserted it into all of the empty sidekick name slots. Last of all was the main shero of the story. The shero was to be a perfect person, beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous. All day at school Nation searched for a name, but could think of nothing. The answer finally came in his 6^th period class. It was then that Nation realized that the student sitting behind him possessed all of these qualities and more. He asked her for permission to use her name, which she agreed to. Nation decided not to make any changes to the shero’s name, for the name was so flawless and pleasant that tampering with it would have ruined it.

With this problem solved, Nation returned home to his computer, and once again consumed himself in his writing. Lingwa did nothing to stop this, for she knew that her brother would only reverse whatever she did. Instead, Lingwa worked on helping Nation complete his story faster.

Nation completed 26 full pages of his story, and the next day at school he printed out a copy and boasted about it. The Gods of Literature, who had for the moment forgiven Nation, were now stirred into a rage once again, and they sent forth a Sandwich of Laziness to lead Nation to his downfall.

Nation happily strode around in the cafeteria on Tuesday morning. All of a sudden, he noticed a sandwich, lying on the table. Normally, he would have passed by without a remark, but this sandwich was shaped so perfectly, and looked so enticing, that Nation could not resist.

“Woah... a free sandwich!” exclaimed Nation, saliva drooling form his mouth. Turning his head left and right to make sure no one was watching, Nation quickly snatched the sandwich, and wolfed it down in a single bite.

When Nation returned home that day, he immediately sat down on the couch and watched TV. At first, Lingwa was alarmed, for every day Nation had been working on his myth. But then, taking that into account, Lingwa decided that he was just taking a well-deserved break.

The next day, Nation did the exact same thing, and Lingwa was beginning to worry. Luckily, the effects of the sandwich had worn off by night, and Nation quickly went to work typing, making up only partially for the time he had lost.

The next night, he worked very late into the night, almost until the sun rose the next morning. He almost doubled his story length, bringing the total now to 48 pages. However, the twilight time, between 4 and 6 o’ clock AM is when the most evil of the Literature Gods lurked, and the twin brothers, Grammar and Grammer, decided to play their tricks upon the unfortunate Nation.

The twin brothers consisted of one smart brother, Grammar, and one not-so-smart brother, Grammer. Together, they “helped” people by correcting their grammar, with one telling the correct form, and the other telling the utterly erroneous form. Since they were twins, no one could tell which was right, and many a writer had been broken by the duo.

“Hello, good buddy Nation!” the twins caroled in unison. “We’ve come to help you on your grammar.”

“Wow, really? Thanks, I’ve been awake so long that I cannot think straight. I’m very grateful for all of your help,” replied Nation enthusiastically.

“Hey man, it’s not ‘Corran dead,’ it’s ‘Corran is dead.’ You forgot the verb.”

“What are you talking about brother? EVERYONE knows that leaving out the verb is the new ‘cool’ fad in writing,” the other twin said.

Nation was now stressed, caught between two very tempting choices. Did he want to be grammatically correct, or did he want to be the new, hip writer using all of the “wickety-wack” colloquial phrases? Before he could make a decision, the twins had already found more problems with his work.

“That’s a run-on sentence!!!” screamed one of the brothers, as if the world was about to end and the sky was falling.

“Oh my gosh, no it’s not! It’s an... IMPROPER SEMICOLON USE!!!!!!!!!!” yelled the other brother so loud that it really could have brought the sky crashing down.

Nation now frantically typed, trying to correct his mistakes. In his haste, Nation had accidentally typed a sentence fragment. He braced his ears.

“SENTENCE FRAGMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“That’s a sentence fragment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

All of a sudden, Nation came to a realization. He pointed toward the first twin who had spoke. “Hey, ‘SENTENCE FRAGMENT!’ is also a sentence fragment. You’re nothing but a phony grammar-correction twin. With a wave of his hand, Nation flicked away Grammer, the not-so-smart twin, and Nation continued writing the rest of the night, writing in perfect grammar with the help of Grammar.

Finally, it was the last day that Nation had to work on his myth. He was just 8 pages shy of completion. He quickly finished the rest of the story with ease, and now he printed it out. The stack of papers was almost an entire centimeter thick!

As the pages rolled out of the printer, Nation suddenly came to a frightening conclusion. What if his story was too long? Would his teacher accept it? What if it was too much for Mrs. Night to read, and he received an “incomplete” because it was too long for anyone to read? 58 pages of material, wasted for nothing. Nation now panicked, reaching a new low of hopelessness. He pontificated long and hard about what options he had.

All of a sudden, it came to him. He would write another, much-shorter myth, which the teacher could read instead, if the 58-pager indeed proved too long. Of course, it would require much more effort on his part, for it was already 11 o ‘clock PM on the eve of the due date, but Nation had suddenly reached a revelation, that the world was not all about himself, and that a true hero would go out of his way to make something easier for others. So, he ran through all of his plot options. He needed something quick, very shallow, and with jokes to cover up the mess if the teacher had decided to read only the short myth. He also didn’t want to spend too much time creating a new plot line and setting. In the end, he came upon the perfect idea: take the setting which he had been working in for the past week. No, not the fabled city of Lut Gholien or the foothills of Mt. Hyjal. Nation was thinking of his story, the tale of how he had written the myth. So, in essence, he wrote a myth about writing a myth.

The next day, Nation arrived at school, with pencils in hand and two myths in the bag. Through the ordeal, he had grown more mature, and this time he made sure he did not flaunt his myths, as to not anger the Gods of Literature once again. He silently gave his humble thanks to his teacher for giving him the opportunity to write the myths, and also to the Gods of Literature, for possessing him to create a mammoth of a story, and to also allow him the inspiration to finish his second quickly.

After he had turned in the myths, Nation quietly returned his life to normalcy. He went back to his old computer-gaming ways, and ate and slept regularly. But Nation had not gone unchanged through all of this, and from his adventure he retained the modesty he learned, and also kept Grammar’s grammar skills. He incorporated this into all of his future work, and as a result, his work felt much more complete (and readable) than his previous accomplishments.

And this is the tale of how a 58 page, 1334 line, 16,062 word, 90,583 character (with spaces) story was written in only 40 hours, a seemingly impossible and unexplainable feat—explained.