Since you guys said yes to my previous query, here's an excerpt from the book I'm working on. It's acutally near the end of the book.

After a while, my feet started wandering of their own accord, to the point where I hardly noticed where I was walking. As I walked I tore and threw pages of the manuscript in my hand and tossed them to the wind. How could I have lost? My manuscript was perfect! Wasn’t it? These questions tumbled around in my head, repeating themselves over and over until they were worn and frayed, and yet they still clung tightly to my mind.

Why hadn’t I won?

I was so consumed by this question that I didn’t even notice where I was until I found myself standing at the pier at the edge of town. There was someone sitting at the edge of the pier, but I couldn’t tell who it was from where I was standing. Gradually, I walked down to the end of the pier and sat next to the person, their unlit lantern set between us.

The person sitting next to me was a teenage girl, about my age actually, with light brown hair that reached just past her shoulders, falling loose behind her head. She wore simple jeans and sneakers, and a blue jacket. The one thing I really noticed about her, though was her hat. It was a camo-blue bucket hat, frayed at the edges. It was perched on her head, slightly cock-eyed, as if she had placed it on her head as she walked out her front door. It looked like she was sketching in a journal, although I couldn’t really see anything. She would have fit right in at school, even though I had never seen her there.

The night was silent for a few minutes. Then the girl set down the black mechanical pencil she was using and looked up at the sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She asked, gazing lovingly at the sky, as if she had a boyfriend watching her from above. Then she looked at me. “Have you ever taken a moment from your life to look at the stars? Or have you been to enthralled with that book of yours?” She continued, gesturing to the last few pages of my manuscript in my hand. I was surprised, to say the least. How had she known about my book...?

She must have seen my confusion on my face, because she laughed. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. Everyone knows that you’ve been trying to write a book for ages.” She set down her journal and let her feet dangle over the water. “Tell me; why do you think your manuscript lost the competition?”

Her question took me completely by surprise. The endless possibilities of suggestions swirled in my head. “Well, I think the judges were bribed or something. They didn’t really seem to consider mine too much. And I read some of the samples of the other stories, and they weren’t really that good. Of course, Lissy said I was being too obsessed with the contest and I should focus on other things, and...” And before I knew it, I was spilling the entire affair to a complete stranger who hadn’t even given me her name.

After I had finished, the girl looked at me for a long time, straight and evenly in the eye. Her eyes weren’t accusing, or glaring, or proud. They just looked at me with a hidden wisdom that was completely beyond my experience. The silence stretched on. Finally, unable to keep it in, I asked her a question.

“What do you think?”

“What do I think?” the girl asked, repeating my question. “Why would my opinion change what has happened, or what you think of said events? Why does my opinion matter?”

“Well,” I said, leaning back. “Because I’m tired of hearing everyone tell me to quit, to give up, that I’m not good enough. I get the feeling that you won’t tell me that.”

“And I won’t.” She said, picking up her journal again. “What I will tell you is that it is time to take a break from your writing. You did a magnificent achievement, finishing a book in two weeks. However, Rome was not built in a day, and a good story cannot be written in the same way.”

“I also think,” She continued, “that your story was forced, as if you were trying to get a point across, with as many overdramatic words and flair as possible. I believe that this also comes from your hasty writing. Again, you tried to write a beautifully written story in a short amount of time to meet a certain set of requirements. A good story cannot be written this way.”


I considered what she had said for a moment. She hadn’t said anything about my fallout with my friends and my boss, and my withdrawal from society. Instead, she had gotten straight to the heart of the matter; the book that caused me to lose my head.

“Let me ask you something,” The girl said, looking up at the sky again. “Have you ever seen Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night? It’s really a wonderful painting.”

I nodded. I remembered seeing it in the museum last week. “What does that have to do with my book?” I asked.

“Because Vincent Van Gogh also made several wonderful works of art. And all were created over time, not hastily. He poured his heart into them. Do you think that such a beautiful painting could have been made on commission? Or the night sky that we see now?”

I looked out at the sea again, and the night sky shining above it. Here, away from the city lights, I found my eyes opened to true beauty and serenity, the sea almost perfectly reflecting the moonless, cloudless sky.

“A true work of art cannot be forced.” The girl said. “Some can, actually, but a good book comes from true inspiration and time. Very rarely, if at all, can a good book be made in a two-week deadline. That is my personal opinion of your book, and what I think.”

Out of all the words I had heard that day, hers had made the most sense to me. I had tried to go to far, too fast. I had tried to be different from all the vampire-themed stories out there, with as many large and descriptive words as I could possibly fit, and I had overloaded my book. I had lost the audience within the first few pages. I still had no idea how to fix the conundrum I had found myself in, but everything was starting to fall into place.

“So now what do I do?” I asked.

“That is completely up to you.” The girl said, once again sketching. “You can ignore your former life and stubbornly continue on, or you can apologize and start anew. You could even go in a completely different direction.” She said. “But It’s your decision, not mine.”

“May I ask you one more question, because you seem to know everything?” I asked.

“Oh, I hardly know everything,” the girl said. “although I’ve come rather close at times, or so I’ve thought. But ask away.”


“A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me about the connection between authors and their avatars, so to speak, in the Dreamworld. Of course, I had no idea of how the connection works.”

“I’m not sure If anyone really knows how the connections work,” the girl replied. “But I suppose that the connection would depend on the awareness between the author and avatar. Some, who have died, live on through their avatars here. Others use their avatars to completely place themselves within their world, to dream of lives they could never live in their own. Some may have a mild connection, while many are not even aware of the connection at all.”

“Unless, of course, you are talking about communication between the author and avatar. This is a completely undiscovered realm, for any. Some may chose to majestically appear, while others chose to inhabit their avatars for a time and witness the world through their eyes. Some may speak completely in the avatar’s head. You could be talking to yourself, for all you know.”

She looked back up at the stars again, and I did the same, digesting her words. Then something hit me. “What do you mean, Yo-” I started, looking at her. Then I realized that she had completely vanished, hat, notebook and all. All that remained to show she had ever been there was her lantern, the wick dancing happily as if it had been lit for hours.