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SilverStarry sat down at her desk and began looking over her story. She knew it wasn't perfect. It was anything but perfect, as a matter of fact, but she didn't think she'd done too badly. She had just found a book entitled 'Rate Your Story. Does the Good Outrival the Bad?' and decided it would be interesting to give it a look over.

She began scanning through it to see if any of the things listed in the 'bad' section applied to her story.

"Let's see..." she mused to herself, flipping through the pages. "A very important plot point that disappears halfway through the story for no apparent reason: 10 points. Whoops!" She punched the number into her calculator and continued reading. "Add another 5 if this is because you forgot about it." She blushed and added the five on as well.

"Add the respective amount of points for every cliche used in your story..." SilverStarry went through and added on a lot more points, including 7 for a main character redeeming an evil one, 4 for one of the main characters being the hottest thing to exist on the face of the planet, and 9 for a character being dead/presumed dead and coming back to life by the end of the novel, among other things.

"My," she said to herself, "this is really starting to add up quickly! I can't see how any of the good points of my novel will ever make up for this! I'm not even halfway through the section!"

She also added points for having the worst kissing scene ever written in history (Only 1 point though, which was a big relief.) and 10 points for the first plot hole and 5 for every one after that (There were several, and they added up really quickly.)

It took her almost an hour to go all the way through the 'bad' section in the book, which was a lot longer than she expected it to be, and by the time she was done with that section her 'bad' point count was outrageously high and she was feeling very bad about her novel. She didn't know it was possible to do so many things wrong in one story!

"I'll never be able to make up for all of this," she mumbled dejectedly to herself. She turned the page and her spirit dropped as she saw there were only three items under the 'good' section. She read through them anyway, hoping to at least earn some points.

"Starting your story," she read. "10 points." She sighed and marked that down.

"Working on the story and sticking to it: 50 points." She took those points off of her bad score as well and was slightly happier, even though it didn't outweigh the 'bad' points she had accumulated. She thought about just closing the book right then and there, but something kept her reading it. Maybe she was stubborn. Maybe she was curious. Heck, maybe she was just stupid, but she read on.

"Finishing your story: Infinity. You rock." Her face lit up as she read those last words. True, her story had flaws. True, it wasn't the best story to have ever been written. True, it would take a lot of editing before it would even be readable and even more than that before anyone would even like it. But none of that mattered. She had done something that many people talk about but few ever actually do. She had written a story. She had stuck with it through both its ups and its downs. She had poured all of herself into it. And she had finished it.

In the light of that, nothing else mattered.

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