Alright, before anything else, I have to give a huge, huge shoutout to Miss Mona, again. (Love her, by the way) because if it weren't for her, this entire thing wouldn't even exist. Like, seriously. The only reason I even started writing this is because of a performance task she gave us. And at first, I was just thinking, Okay, another assignment, I'll just get it over with, but then, somehow, I actually got into it. It was different from what I usually write, and honestly, I wouldn't have even thought of making something like this on my own. I mean, I've written plenty of stories before, but a diary? That was completely new territory for me. But thanks to her task, I got pulled into it, and now, here we are. So yeah, um, Miss Mona, this one's on you.
Now, I also need to give a huge thanks to Mayar (Good friend of mine), because let me tell you, I almost completely messed this thing up without even realizing it. When I first started writing, I did what I always do: I jumped straight into the action. No intro, no setup, nothing. Just straight into the story. And to me, that made total sense. That's just how I've always written. All my books are in third person, and they all start right in the middle of something happening because I like getting straight to the point. But this? Oh god, THIS was my first time seriously writing in first person, and I just didn't think about how that changed things. It wasn't until Mayar sent me her diary for comments, that I had a full-on oh... wait a second moment. Hers had an actual intro, like, a proper start where she set things up before getting into the story. And that's when it occurred to me: oh. It's a diary. That makes sense. Probably should've done that too.
So, big thanks to Miss Mona for giving me this performance task. Honestly, I wasn't even thinking about writing a diary, I like third person so much, believe me when I tell you, I had this very story written in third person (only one short chapter), before I started reading the instructions of the performance task and one of the requirements was "Write a story of an AI apocalypse, written as a first-person diary" And I just stared at the paper and was like "Oh crap.."
It's like she gave me a challenge, and I was ok with it, "Sure, I'll do it," and then my brain was like, "But wait, what's a diary again?" So yeah, this thing definitely wouldn't exist without Miss Mona's task.
Now, Mayar..? Oh boy, where do I even start? If she hadn't sent me her diary, I would've kept writing mine like an idiot and going, cool, cool, I'm nailing this, only to have someone ask, "Uh, where's the intro?" and I'd be like, "What intro?"
Mayar's diary actually made me realize that, oh, this is a diary not a novel. It wasn't until I saw hers that I thought, "Hey, maybe I should give my readers some context and not just throw them into the deep end of a random diary entry." So, huge thanks to Mayar for not letting me turn this into the lost chapters of a thriller with no actual setup.
Without Miss Mona pushing me into this writing rabbit hole, and Mayar saving me from drowning in the "no intro" ocean, this thing would've been like a bad pun, something only I find funny and nobody else gets.
Thanks to them for making sure this didn't turn into a glitch in the system or an error I couldn't fix. I could've easily let it go offline and bug out completely. Worst of all, it could've left me in the void with no way out.
Haha, get it?