This Is Just To Say

I am a fan of “This American Life”, and after listening to episode 354, “Mistakes Were Made” I became inspired. The entire second act of the show was dedicated to William Carlos Williams' poem, “This Is Just To Say”, and they had their regular contributors put their own spin on the poem. So without any further ado, here are my three versions of “This Is Just To Say"

This Is Just To Say
by VOID Munashii
With apologies to William Carlos Williams

Please forgive me
for eating you
and turning you
into one of the undead

You probably
did not want
to die, let alone
rise again as a
flesh-eating monster

But your flesh
was so delicious,
and my hunger
was so painful

---

I allowed your
research station to
fall from orbit,
and burn up in the
atmosphere

You probably
wanted me to
at least save the data
that you invested
so much money into

Forgive me
but it was one
of your scientists
that caused the problems
in the first place

---

I blew up
the battle station
which you used
to destroy Alderaan

You were probably
trying to possess
the ultimate power
in the universe

Forgive me,
but you really
should have secured
that exhaust port

Victory is Mine!

So here we are, a mere twenty days into the month and I have already finished my NaNoWriMo novel(la) with ten days to go so that I can go back and maybe flesh out some scenes that are not as smooth as could be. The total word count comes out to 52,197 (this will likely change before the final verification), and around 115 pages, which is a bit short to really call a novel.

It was a fun experience, and it was nice to win so easily. It was also really nice to actually finish a Lance Maverick story. Lance has been bouncing around in my head for years now, developing from a sort of one-note joke into a more fleshed out character. “Lance Maverick Kills Bugs Dead!” (I'm not sure if that is staying the title, but it's better than “Lance Maverick and the Broken Hearted”, which was the first title) marks the fourth or fifth attempt to do a LM story, and chronologically it is probably the third or fourth story in that reality's timeline, but I plan to go back and write those stories later, maybe for next NaNoWriMo.

Other than the ego boost of actually finishing a story (it has literally been years since I finished a story, which would be the first Trashman story), finishing this means that I can now focus on Mallville again, which means:

1.Next week's entry should go up on time (sorry about that for anyone who waits for the new entries)
2.I can actually review the next entry before posting it to fix any of the little things that got through while writing. Mallville is only a rough draft, but I still like to catch typos and spelling errors.
3.The Who's Who page can be updated with the events of the last entry and the next one.
4.I can actually finish the part I was working on back on Halloween.

So what am I going to do with Lance Maverick now that it is completed? Once I finish Mallville (which will still be awhile, the tale is only in it's second act of a planned three), I plan to release Lance Maverick as another Blognovel under a creative commons license. I am also thinking of trying to do a podcast version of both, but my podcasting plans are still in the future a bit.

Not only was this a fun challenge, but also a learning experience. I plan to keep up the writing habits I have fostered during NaNoWriMo, although not to the daily extreme that I was for the first ten days. While I may not write two or three thousand words everyday, I will keep doing that on my days off before going off to play games or do other things.

I hope that you are reading and enjoying Mallville, and upon it's completion I hope you will read and enjoy Lance Maverick. If you are enjoying my work, please let me know. If you have constructive criticisms, please let me know as well. You can leave comments for me either here or on the Mallville blog. The best things you can do to keep me working at this point are to let me know you are there, and to let other people know that I am here.

Thank you,