"So when are you going to submit the book you wrote?" Benjamin asked, as Sarah slammed her door locker shut.
"Sarah gave a weary smile, pushing up her glasses as she carried her books. " I don't really know Benny." she replied as they both began to walk down to her chemistry class. " You know how it is with me."
"Stop beating yourself up Sarah. You've written countless of different stories. As far as I know, they're all pretty good." he said, sparking a wide smile like he always did.
They arrive at class, and she heads of to her designated seat. The classroom was in decent shape, with its small one person tables. The sunlight of Cape Town was leaking into the intricately designed windows, right next to her seat. She brought out her black school bag, before bringing out her special writing book. She opened to what seemed to be the current page, and started frantically writing like her life depended on it. Suddenly, she felt an arm on her shoulder that sent a shocking jolt through her.
"Hey Sarah! How's chapter 3 coming along?" asked a friendly, light voice. " Don't startle me Ziva!" she said, ripping her arm of her shoulder. "And its actually going swimmingly to be blunt with you!" she said, beaming a large, proud smile.
"chapter 3 will probably be done by the end of the week."
"You always talk like such a Shakespearian, you this girl." Ziva retorted, shaking her head in pretend dismay. "Well, one it's finished, remember to give me first. Cause this time, I definitely asked before Benjamin." she takes her seat behind her and puts her feet on the table. Ziva was very "out-there" as Sarah would say. She was always so much more out-going and confident than her. Sarah on the other hand felt like she was losing her skill to talk to other people the more she spoke. "How does one regress in social skill?" she would ask herself. She never knew how to reply.
School went relatively fast. Mostly because she wasn't engrossed in pitiful topics like diphthongs and the reproductive system of a frog and more focused on just writing. She could only remember the dreaded morning assembly that she was never looking forward to. This one in particular was for a special reason. The head girl, Melissa, had just released her 10th book. It was an impressive feat no doubt, even though the quality of the book was a tad bit shakey (something to do with the pacing)
In her life, Sarah had written over 20 books, but hadn't released a single one to the public. She always had the same excuse of "She wasn't ready yet" or " She thinks it won't be good enough."
Despite this, she almost always overloaded her two closest friends, Benjamin and Ziva, with as much of her work as she could. Whether they like it or not.
Today, she carelessly threw her bag to a chair nearby as she entered her room, and started to browse the web, searching for inspiration like she always did.
Her phone would vibrate as she would answer a few texts from her parents, both of whom are in traffic. She knew that it wouldn't make much of an impact, whether or not they were around.
Sarah took a look at her emails. Just a bunch of useless ads as per usual. Delete. Delete. Delete.
But a message caught the corner of her eye. It was from Webnovel. At first, the mouse hovered over the release button. It was probably just a trashy recommendation no one in their right mind would read. But then, she saw the title.
OCT Writing Competition!
Sarah never shared her stories for a reason. She was underconfident. Some previous events in her life permanently capped her confidence. She went through so much pain and turmoil, going from an outgoing primary school child to a mostly awkward, always tired-looking person. She related her books to herself, thinking they would never be good enough, simply because they were associated with her. The truth is, she wasn't a very big fan of herself. And to her, who would be?
Regardless, she clicked on the email anyway and began to read its contents. None of the words intrigued her. She had read this all before, to be honest. She sighed and got off her desk to further darken her pitch-black room. She had to get back to writing after all.
Just to make sure though, she rushed back to her laptop to finish that email. What she saw shocked her to her core.
"FIRST PRIZE RECEIVES AN ANIMATED ADAPTATION OF THEIR STORY!"
"Huh?!?"
She read it again, and again, over and over again like a young boy playing temple run for the first time.
"Oh God, the due date is..." she worriedly paced around, biting her clean nails.
The due date was, of course, today.Â
"God, why did I redirect Webnovel to spam?!?" she asked herself out loud. "What is wrong with me for God's sake?!?!?"
Her tangent of self-depreciating rhetorical questions didn't get an answer, so she phoned some friends.Â
The once catchy discord-calling sound now dragged out her anxiety. The two were online but didn't seem to answer her desperate attempts to reach her. She was like a castaway, whose SOS message didn't seem to attract the helicopter hovering above them.
Until Benjamin answered the call.
"Hey, Sarah! I think Ziva went to get something, so she won't be here for like 3 minutes." the crackly voice bellowed. Sarah reduced her speaker volume, before retorting. "BENJAMIN, IT'S HORRIBLE! I didn't know Webnovel offered animation deals! Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"Well, you never did sound excited to show your work, did you?"
She looked down at the floor sadly, as tears began to well in her eyes. She screwed up again. She always screwed up. The thoughts barreling in her mind turned negative in an instant.
"But..."
Ziva was added to the call. "Yeah, we kinda saw this coming. You ready to hear something that might excite you?" she asked, as she began to share a slight chuckle with Benjamin.
"What did you guys do?" she asked with even more worry.
"Well, thanks to Benny at least, we've been archiving your stories of Google Docs."
"After the... last time, we wanted to make sure we would have something to remember you by at least," Benjamin answered adding to her surprise.
"Wait, so that means...
"Yep," Ziva interrupted. "All you have to do is pick which story you want."
"Hard choice if you ask me," Benjamin said, with a smile that can be heard through audio.
Sarah broke down again in tears on the call while thanking her friends.
4 Days later
"Sarah, have you seen?" Ziva asked, excitedly waving her phone.
Sarah turned around weary, clutching her books to her chest.
"What happened?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Look at number one trending!!" she said, pointing to the top of the list.
"Wait, what?"
Word Warrior by Sarah Shala.
Ranked number one in the world.