She was the youngest among us and that is the only thing I could say about her with confidence. She seemed a good listener but at the same time was reserved and very hard to read. Honestly, I was ready to expect any kind of surprises. Despite that, the news about her winning the BBC-Ukraine Book of the Year Award just shocked me out of balance.
I knew she was one of the winners, as she had not only written 50 000 words but surpassed this goal. I knew she had been very confident about her work and had some hopes. But the BBC… Something wasn’t right. She was writing a trivial Young Adult story in simple Young Adult style and, unless she managed to create and publish something entirely different in a year… No, it wasn’t possible.
Why her? Why not Alex? She also was a NaNo winner, even though she was still struggling to find a publisher. Why not Eva? Her style is very vivid and unique. I wish she could find courage to move past first five chapters. Why not Vlad? He had a lot of decent stories — every one of them was shorter than three pages but still. Why not me, at the very end? I’s worked hard enough and… Oh, well, I hadn’t finished anything either.
That was where I started thinking she was worthy, after all. She took upon her fame with dignity and clearly wasn’t going to forget about us. She was talking how much our NaNo community helped and inspired her and how grateful she was. Alex contacted her about all of this, and she seemed friendly and ready to listen, even if a little reserved.
And that was where I started thinking it wasn’t so bad for me after all. It stopped being so hard to force myself to work and for once in a while I was productive and happy about what I was doing. The world, all things considered, was fine and full of hope, until, inevitably, scandal happened and reviled a bunch of nepotism, corruption and plagiarism, all tided to Ann and her award-winning debut.
***
We met again this November. Almost all people were from the last year: Alex, Eva, Vlad, me and others. Some were absent, including, of course, Ann. Despite that, she was on our minds constantly and it made it all insufferable. We tried talking about composition, style and different other abstract writing stuff but all in all something kept us from opening up.
“And what about the news?” I asked, unable to bear it anymore.
Everyone trembled, there were no need to explain what news I was talking about.
“It’s horrible, I think,” Eva said. “She seemed such a nice girl.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say…”
“The unfortunate thing is that she was dropping the name of NaNo everywhere.” Alex’s tone was cold and harsh. “This year we hardly have anyone new and in smaller cities it’s ever worse.”
“Such a treachery! How could we trust anyone now?”
“How could anyone trust us? Now we, for sure, won’t be able to publish our anthology and it was almost ready.”
They buzzed a bit more, until everyone had a chance to let off the pressure. It didn’t help, in the very end, the air was still stale. We didn’t share any of our plans or writing on that meeting. And I hadn’t written anything at all, as that was when I realized there was no point in finishing anything, after all.
I decided to quit.
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