New Moon stuff

Nightshade hesitated, long-nailed fingers hovering over the thin silver keyboard plugged into the glossy computer. She had always wished for a device of her own; however, she was tragically forced into sharing a wonderful Mac with her family.

"Perhaps I shall write about the novel titled 'New Moon,'" she mused. She began to type carefully, but quickly tired of penning a blog post in such a ridiculous and absurd way. "Now," she murmured, "I shall return to writing in the plain, understandable vernacular of most Americans."

Okay, I seriously can't believe I have the capacity to write something as horribly overwritten as that. I'm kind of torn between pounding my head on a wall and laughing hysterically.

So right now, I dumped Twilight and skipped to New Moon, because I was SO INSANELY BORED with it. (This may or may not have to do with the fact that I was reading Dan Bergstein's Blogging New Moon posts last night.) While I was reading the prologue/preface/melodramatic paragraph that comes before Chapter 1, I decided I'd attack with a pencil and EDIT, as if Stephenie Meyer handed me the manuscript and said "Hey Nightshade, can you edit this for me? It's my new book and I need a proofreader."

I'm a brutal proofreader, by the way. BRUTAL. Especially with grammar and punctuation. And sentence structure. And a lot of other things... but that's beside the point. The point is, it's like rewriting New Moon. So here's the Preface for all NINE of you followers! I'll put the original text first. (Disclaimer: New Moon text copyright Stephenie Meyer 2006)

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough. My legs seemed to move slower and slower as I fought my way through the callous crowd, but the hands on the huge clock tower didn't slow. With relentless, uncaring force, they turned inexorably toward the end--the end of everything.

But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

Alice had said there was a good chance we would both die here. Perhaps the outcome would be different if she weren't trapped by the brilliant sunlight; only I was free to run across this bright, crowded square.

And I couldn't run fast enough.

So it didn't matter to me that we were surrounded by our extraordinarily dangerous enemies. As the clock began to toll out the hour, vibrating under the soles of my sluggish feet, I knew I was too late--and I was glad something bloodthirsty waited in the wings. For in failing at this, I forfeited any desire to live.

The clock tolled again, and the sun beat down from the exact center point of the sky.

Heh. Heheheh. HEHEHEHEHEHEH. That was horrible! And now for my version...

I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare- the ones where you have to run away, but you can't run fast enough. I seemed to move more and more slowly as I fought through the crowd. Unfortunately, no matter how much I cursed the clock, it didn't slow down.

But this wasn't a dream. And this time, I wasn't running to save my life. Instead, I was saving something much more important (if you can believe that).

Alice had told me that there was a good chance that we'd both die today. Maybe it would've been different if she hadn't been stuck in the car. But right now, I was the only one who had the freedom to get out and run.

But I couldn't run fast enough, so to me, it didn't matter that we were surrounded by enemies.

The clock began to strike twelve. I knew I was too late. I was actually glad that our enemies were hanging around, because if I failed in this, I didn't want to live.

Huh, that was a lot shorter than the original. Did you love it? Hate it? Think I could've shortened it a little more? Leave a comment with feedback- I'd love to hear it!