The Most Useless Part of My NaNo

NaNoWriMo is over, and I made it! I actually stayed more on top of it than I usually do, mostly thanks to the word crawls on the NaNo forums and the amazing Fighters' Block website which I cannot recommend enough. But I wanted to share the absolute most ridiculous part of my NaNo with you.

So I had just begun a 600-word sprint and was about 100 words into it when Jacob announced dinner was ready. I didn't want to pause my sprint but I didn't want to keep him waiting. Or the food. I was hungry. What followed was me trying to finish up the remaining 500 words as quickly as possible. Here you go. Enjoy.

---

They waited... and waited... and waited. Parkson kept anxiously climbing out of his hiding spot to peek into the enormous cave, until finally Junia said, "Would you PLEASE stop doing that? That's obviously going to attract the attention of Jacques and Marli if they're anywhere near the mouth of the cave. We just got rescued, I'm not about to be kidnapped again just because you could not be patient enough."

"Sorry," Parkson said, climbing back down into a crevice next to Junia. "I'm just anxious."

"I am anxious as well," Junia said irritably, "but I am not behaving like an idiot because of it. You could learn something from me and my immense soldier calm."

My husband just told me food is ready so I'm going to race to get to the end of this word sprint by writing some nonsense. Parkson decided to think of colors. Colors were nice to think of and they were a good thing to list. And they would be a good way to pass the time until Lucas came back with Jacques and Marli and Parkson's mother Elizabeth and any of the other things they hoped he returned with.

So, colors. What were some good colors? Blue was a good color, like the sky and the ocean and some people's eyes. Sometimes tears were drawn blue but they didn't have to be, they were just water. Water in general seemed to be blue but not always.

Green was a color. Bright green was the color of some creepy bugs and Parkson didn't like those, but dark green was the color of some trees and some people's eyes and also sludge. Parkson didn't know where sludge came from, but it occasionally sat outside his work place and he tried to cover it up with a cloak so nobody would walk by and think, "Oh, I don't want to buy vegetables from the sludge man!" Vegetables were green, too, all sorts of wonderful vegetables -- but not tomatoes, of course -- vegetables like broccoli and kale and spinach and brussel sprouts and asparagus and cucumber and zucchini and pickles. The broccoli was named Steven, or at least it would have been if they had actual names and not just names like "broccoli." Parkson liked dreaming about naming his vegetables. It made it so much sadder, though, when they would ultimately be eaten. Instead of eating a delicious salad of lettuce and cucumbers and spinach, they'd be eating a bowl full of Steves and Michaels and Marissas and Louises and Luises and Larissas and Lourisesasas even though that wasn't a name that anybody had ever made up.

Other colors? Red. Red was a color. Red was the color of tomatoes, which was of course his favorite vegetable. But it was also the color of things like blood, which were less pleasant. Of course, on the plus side, if he bled all over the tomatoes, nobody would ever know because it would blend in and it would be great. He didn't plan to bleed all over the tomatoes, but you never could tell what would happen on the street. A crow could bite his fingers off and then all the blow in his fingers would go flying out and get all over the tomatoes, and you couldn't exactly give the tomatoes back so he'd still have to try to sell them.

Ok, on to other colors. Brown. Brown was the color of the dirt. Darker brown was mud, lighter brown was... sand? He didn't know. He pooped brown sometimes. And tree bark was brown, and some people had brown eyes. Lots of people had lots of different color eyes. He had never thought about this before, and he was surprised by how interesting it was. It at least kept him busy, letting these bizarre thoughts fly before he could be reunited with his mother again.

NaNoWriMo 2014: A Recap

Well, I made it all the way to 50,000 words, although my story is not terribly good and far from finished. Let's take a brief moment to look at some of the highlights.

When I realized my main character was essentially just me, and I threw in a not-me detail and was like, "Ta-da! Fixed now!":

English was never my strong point—my vocabulary was just fine, but my letters to my grandparents were riddled with spelling and punctuation errors well into my teens—and I’m not sure I would have been able to get the B I got without my mom’s gentle coaching.

When I named half my characters and locations after New Lifers -- sometimes twice:

And, I realized, with a shock, that was Pastor Beck's voice.

...a couple who had apparently survived together: Jessie and Tim. 

"Listen, Sarah here thinks she knows a back way into town." 

I suddenly remembered his name: it was Ben. [And his character's girlfriend...] The shellshocked girl from earlier, Aly, was another. 

"So how come God would kill a jerk like my roommate Josh Herndon and leave you alone?" [I had a lot of fun making the characters named after my friends awful people] 

He'd introduced himself as Nathan on the way over to the house. 

"Well, THAT'S not comforting," Elizabeth said, laughing a little but she sounded uncertain and scared. 

When I changed my male lead's name from Daniel to Jason because I kept calling him "Jason" in my head anyway:

"Daniel," he said, sitting smoothly down in the chair opposite me. "Are you a freshman?" 

I turned my head to find out who exactly it was, and there was Jason, whose name is now Jason, not Daniel, standing in front of me. 

When I tried to type without looking at the screen to go faster and filled my Word document with red squiggly lines:

"My family isnt' poor but we're defnitely not rivh eacither."

When I made weird typos and then decided to justify them in-text for extra words:

"Dad's a BUILDER," I said, putting empasis on the word builder for some reason I didn't understand. It just felt like the right thing to do. 

When I abruptly switched genres because this one was boring:

I knew she was right. But I was bored of this story.
Let's take a detour.
When I got back to my dorm room, it was empty. In fact, I realized, I hadn't seen another person on the way back from class. That's weird, I thought. On Monday the campus was buzzing all day.
I pulled the curtains back and peeked out my window. Nope, nobody there. I stared at the walkway for almost a full five minutes, but nobody walked past. The ugly gray cloudy sky seemed somehow darker and more oppressive, like it was a sign of something ominous coming.

When all my characters' names apparently began with E before I forgot all their names and changed them anyway:

"So, um, if you don't know me, my name's Erik." 

He looked to one of the boys sitting next to him and said, "Ethan, do you want to tell them what you've been looking up?" 

"That's a really good idea, Emily. Go for it."

When I created a dog in my story... and then forgot about him completely and apparently just left him abandoned in an empty house. Whoops:

Houdini seemed to have indeed calmed down very quickly from yet another stranger in his midst, and instead he went trotting back off into the rest of the house, performing the rounds again in his search for the people who lived here before.

When the character I named after my husband turned out to be a huge jerk that made everyone happy by being punched in the face:

Jacob snorted. "Yeah, right. Tomorrow some more of us will be gone, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after --"
Suddenly there was a loud thump sound, Jacob cried out in pain and bent over sideways, clutching his jaw. Erik stood beside him, shaking his hand, which he had clearly just used to punch him. Jacob stood back up and with a look that could kill, he muttered something under his breath. Most of the people in the room smiled.

When I suddenly got an idea of how to move my plot forward, and my characters caught my sudden enthusiasm:

"I HAVE A GREAT IDEA!" Samantha suddenly yelled. Everybody looked at her, a little startled at her outburst.

When my husband asked me to make his character a murderer and I did but didn't bother to provide any reason for him to be one:

"Now, listen to me," Jacob hissed in my ear. "You think you're fooling everyone with this cute little goody goody act, but I am SICK of it. I thought maybe I could use your it to my advantage. But I thought it might be more fun to just kill you and leave you for the others to find."
What.
OK, he's been set up as creepy and stuff, but now he's just ready to kill people out of nowhere? I might have lost the believability of this story. This is what happens when I agree to name a character after my husband and make him a murderer.
Anyway.

When during that attempted murder scene, I still just couldn't deal with how ridiculous it was:

He grabbed one of the knives off the counter next to us, pinned me down, and had raised his hand to stab me in... the face? Well, that's stupid.

And all the rest of the more entertainingly goofy moments scattered throughout.

Did you guys do NaNoWriMo this year? What was your favorite part of your story?

Blog Request: NaNoWriMo

Last week I asked you guys what you wanted me to write about, and I got quite a few very cool ideas -- I will definitely be tackling them whenever I have nothing in particular I want to write about.

I wanted to address this one first, seeing as how we've just passed the halfway point of November:

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? If yes, what's it about? If no, what are the top few ideas you want to write about someday?

I absolutely am doing NaNoWriMo this year, although it's been a bit of an odd journey. I started off writing a Christian coming-of-age story, sort of the anti-God's Not Dead. The central idea was of a very sheltered girl heading off to a secular college, ready to do battle for God in an anti-Christian environment. But when she gets there, she finds that things don't seem to be lining up the way she thought they would. Most people don't seem to be that hostile about her faith, they just don't care and the few times she tries to stand up for God by challenging a teacher on evolution or God's existence, it doesn't go at all as she expects. She wonders if she's not being bold enough, but ultimately she figures out she's not even a little bit prepared for what the real world is like, and she has to find a way to re-shape her faith a little bit without abandoning it.

So I was all excited about this idea, had a lot of cool things I wanted to explore, but about four days in, I remembered why I don't ever write dramatic YA growing-up stories. They're so boring to write.

So then this happened, in the middle of my MC getting advice from her mom on the phone:

I knew she was right. But I was bored of this story. 

Let's take a detour. 

When I got back to my dorm room, it was empty. In fact, I realized, I hadn't seen another person on the way back from class. That's weird, I thought. On Monday the campus was buzzing all day. 

I pulled the curtains back and peeked out my window. Nope, nobody there. I stared at the walkway for almost a full five minutes, but nobody walked past. The ugly gray cloudy sky seemed somehow darker and more oppressive. 

I tried to tell myself I was crazy. Maybe there was a big event going on and everybody was attending that. Maybe it was a sports thing. I hadn't paid any attention to the sports things. Shannon was a sports nut, so that would explain why she wasn't here either. 

I peeked my head out into the hallway and then wandered through the halls, taking a moment to peek in doors that were open. Nobody. 

When I got to the end of the hall, I found Rachael's office, closed but with the blinds open, and with a clear sign on the door: "In from 10-6." 

It was 11:30 right now. 

Maybe she was off at lunch, I told myself, though I tried the door and it was unlocked. Rachael wouldn't leave her door unlocked when she went to lunch, would she? She had given us a huge lecture the other night about how important it was to lock our own doors when we weren't there, just as a matter of safety, because that way if anyone got into the building sneaking in behind someone else, they couldn't go into any rooms that didn't let them in. 

So why would she leave her door unlocked in the middle of the day and not be here? 

Maybe she just ran down the hall to make a copy or check on someone. 

So I sank down to the floor next to the door and patiently waited. 

And that is how my quiet coming-of-age Christian story turned into a survival horror Left Behind-style story, though the one in charge of all these disappearances is definitely not God. I'm not sure what's going on here (and I doubt I'm ever going to explain it in the story), but a huge chunk of the population is gone, and periodically more just disappear. My character is convinced it is God, although she's not sure how or why, since this isn't how she's ever heard the rapture preached. She may accidentally start a cult eventually. Still debating on that one.

Also, Jacob requested that I include him in the story as a murderer. I named a character after him and he turned out to be just the worst person (last chapter, he got punched in the face and everyone cheered) so I don't think people are going to be surprised when he's a murderer.

I'm currently about 5000 words behind, but I'm slowly catching up, so I'm optimistic that I'm going to make it this year.

I don't have any other stories currently mulling around inside my brain, but there are a few written/half-written past NaNo projects I'd love to play around with some more. I'll have to talk about those some other time.

How about you guys? Are you NaNoing? If so, what are you writing about, and how is it going?

No Skye... But a NaNo Snippet!

Sorry about no Skye this week. Blogging might be weird this month, what with trying to do NaNo. But every time I can't post an actual blog, I'll post a snippet from my NaNo speed story thus far. Today, I present the befuddling bit where my main character explains the origins of his name:

“Now what was your name again?”

“Beastly,” I said. I had always hated my name, my mom thought I was very ugly when I was born so she named me Beastly Hugging Robins. I had always asked her to give me a new name but she just shook her head and said, “This is what you get, you make the most of your life, Beastly, and you can’t complain or it won’t count anymore.”

The midget shook his head. “That is a terrible,” he said. “My name is Edward.” 

“Oh, I wish my name was Edward,” I said with a sigh. “Then nobody would hate me as they do now. Did you know I cannot even drive in traffic because the people shout at me, ‘Oh, Beastly!’” 

“I did not,” the midget said solemnly. “But I’m not surprised. What was your mother thinking?” 

I shrugged. I had theorized too many times before with too many friends for it to do any good now. 

This is going to be a fun ride.

NaNoWriMo!

Well, Friday is November 1, and that means National Novel Writing Month! I've participated every year since 2003, and managed to complete it every year except for 2007.

I had high hopes of plotting out my story this year in great depth and doing something I was really proud of, but... well, you've all seen how just a twice-a-week blog writing has been. Clearly I'm not in a place this year to do much of a novel. However, I didn't want to just give up.

So I'm speed writing it.

For those who aren't familiar with my speed stories, it's basically meant to just be a writing exercise or prompt to get you writing in the first place. The idea is that you type and type and type without stopping. The problem is, I type so fast that my hands get far ahead of my brain very quickly and the things I write come out pretty ridiculous. I have entire stories I've written through speed writing chunks, and they are absolutely nonsensical but had a minor following on the NaNoWriMo boards several years back. (After I finish Skye, I'm thinking I might post some of those. They're super fun.)

This will let me keep up the tradition of participating in NaNo, possibly inspire some ideas for a real piece of writing later, all while keeping away the burden of, ya know, making coherent sense.

So prepare for a November of awesome writing like this, taken from my first and favorite speed story:

She picked up a magazine that was lying on the floor and thumbed through it, reading a few of the fashion tips - like those would ever help her! she thought dourly - and reading a bit of the gossip columns of the celebrities. She really couldn't care less who so and so was dating and who they were interested in. She wished she were famous so people wouldn't write that stuff about her because she wouldn't let them.  

She tossed the magazine back onto the floor, without a glance at it. What should she do in the long hours? And the evening longer hours tomorrow, when she hadn't school again? She would have school on Monday, and that would fill up a long time of the day, but now what? She couldn't sleep, she couldn't watch TV, she couldn't read, she couldn't eat, and those were all her choices. 

Maybe the computer could work. She went to it, plugged it in, and turned it on, and it flashed an ERROR screen, like it almost always did. With a shriek of disgust, she threw it on the ground and walked home.

Happy NaNoing, friends!

50,000 Words.... Done.

Well, there's one thing done that was taking up my time this month.

I gave up on my novel being any good long ago, but it feels to have accomplished it nonetheless.

When I realized I had less than 100 words left, I decided I was going to have some fun with the ending. So in the middle of a very tense confrontation between the protagonist and her boss, this happened:

I stared at Dr. Crance for just a moment, then stood to my feet, pressed the secret ballroom dance button under my desk, and as the tango music began to blare through the office, I grabbed him in my arms and said, “Now is not the time to be suspicious. Now is the time to dance!” Maria peeked her head in the door to find out what was going on, but then noticed Dr. Crance and I whirling madly about the room in our dance, an artistic expression of our mutual rage toward each other, and she ducked back out, as she should have.

From that day on, Dr. Crance and I were best buds, and we always enjoyed our mid morning dance breaks.

The End.