NaNoWriMo is here!!!

Posted on by

Set my alarm for 5 a.m. cuz if I don’t make extra time for this in the morning no way am I going to keep up :-)

Here’s my opening sentence. YES it’s rough — it’s supposed to be! But I don’t care, I’m so excited :-)

Most suppose golf is about life, not death—it is, after all, supremely difficult to manage a golf shot while dead—but death had been very much on the minds of the members of Crumbling Bluffs County Club the past few weeks, ever since Sly Burbank’s body had been found off to the side of the 4th fairway. And it was on their minds that night in particular, because they’d learned, that night, the results from the coroner’s inquest.

NaNo on, dudes!!!!!!!!!!

SampleSunday. From Can Job…

Posted on by

Poor Taylor. Her mother got her a PR job at Diptych Corporation, and she’s definitely in over her head . . .

__________________________________

“Taylor.” Basil wet his lips. “We should probably get together right after this. Are you free?”

Taylor nodded.

“Good. Meet me in my office. We have a lot to do. If you need lunch, we’ll order up from the cafeteria. I don’t usually eat lunch.”

She  nodded again.

The meeting dragged on.

Taylor’s notepad filled with scribbles. Hire photographer for press kit photos, check with corporate communications on list of press contacts, check with corporate communications on list of analysts, tradeshow back wall/customer quotes? She smiled at everyone and nodded her head until her neck ached. Fake it fake it fake it.

Finally it was over.

Everybody stood up.

“See you in a few minutes,” Basil reminded her as they were leaving.

“Sure thing.”

She turned toward her cubicle.

“Hey, protest girl.” It was Miles. He’d caught up with her and was speaking now just above a whisper, his lips close to her ear. “Blow him off.”

“I can’t blow him off. You heard Darryl.”

“Yeah. Darryl’s an idiot, too. But I’m telling you. Baz is going to dump his entire job onto you. He’s a lazy f**k and he’s spotted a sucker. That would be you.”

“Thanks, you’re a gem yourself. What are you even doing here? I didn’t think anarchists stooped to working for multi-national corporations.”

“This isn’t a job, it’s an infiltration.” He grinned at her. Ouch. He was very cute. His eyes were hazel in the middle and brown around the edges, and his hair curled out at the tops of his ears.

She looked away.

They were at her cubicle. She stepped inside and hesitated. She should be doing something, getting something, but what was there to get? Maybe . . . another pen.

Miles stood at the cubicle entrance, watching, seeing too much.

Taylor rounded her desk and opened the top drawer.

Miles stood aside to let her back out into the aisle. Aisle. Really a passageway, a beige fabric alley formed by the walls of her neighbor’s cubes.

She hesitated again.

“That way,” Miles pointed. “Turn left at the copier.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She went on to meet her fate . . .

_______________________________________

Want to read more? Click here to buy a copy of Can Job.

FridayFlash: Costume

Posted on by

Costume, a Halloween short story“Jeebus. Again?”

The girl was swaying slightly.

“Hey sexy. Vampire. Give the kiddies their candy won’t you please?”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Sean could barely hear the doorbell over the music, the ruckus of everyone talking.

Couldn’t they just ignore it?

“There.” She pointed at a candy bowl on the floor next to the door. The skin of her arm where it thrust out of the shiny black of her dress sleeve was painted, silvery white slashed with long drizzles of red — he looked at her again as he grabbed a handful of candy. Her face was painted white, too. But his eyes weren’t on her face. They’d dropped lower, to the black lace gathered in ruffles at her bodice . . .

“Hey sexy yourself,” he said. “What did you say you were supposed to be?”

“I’m Death’s Bridesmaid.” She giggled, swaying.

“I liiiiike.”  He grinned at her, a leering sloppy grin. He was drunk, too. They all were. They’d started early.

The door stuck a little but he yanked it open finally. Trio of kids stood on the step looking up at him expectantly. A pirate. A gremliny-looking thing. A Harry Potter. Lit by the porch light against the odd quiet of the dark night behind them.

“Trick or treat.”

Sean dripped a bit of candy into three orange pumpkin-shaped buckets.

Three “thank you’s,” polite, not quite in chorus. But Sean barely heard them — he was thinking about the girl, he slammed the door clumsily while the kids were still standing there, in a hurry to get to her. Before someone else did.

Metallica playing now. Sean mouthed the words as he weaved through the party, looking for her.

‘Cause we hunt you down without mercy
Hunt you down all nightmare long

Dimly, through the music and the laughing and the screeching he thought he heard the doorbell again but this time he did ignore it.

Stupid kids. Babies. Think Halloween is about candy. Ha.

Someone handed him a bottle of Grey Goose as he pushed by a skeleton and another vampire — not as good a costume as his, not by a long shot — he grinned and tipped the bottle to his mouth.

Where was she where was she?

There! With another girl, store-bought French maid costume. Also hot. Yowsa. How to choose how to choose .  .  . he sidled up to Death’s Bridesmaid, pretended to join their nonesense chitchat, his hunch was right, she was into him. Into him. Booyah. Touching his arm, laughing, sexy sideways looks.

The feeling, he knew that feeling, I’m gonna get me some —

Pause in the music. Album over . . .

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Death’s Bridesmaid groaned, lost her balance, fell into Sean. “They’re baaack,” she slurred. “Be a good vampire and go feed the kiddies for me –”

He hesitated. Annoyed. But the music wasn’t back on yet and the doorbell buzzed again.

“Don’t move,” he said to her and wove back through the packed room and yanked the door open.

He started a bit when he saw her. He guessed it was a her. A little girl — had to be, but yowsa that was a good costume, nothing cutesy about that, that black hair was freaky, tangled like that —

“What took you so long?” The little girls eyes were narrowed, fixed on his.

He stared. “Nice, uh, costume.”

He held out a handful of candy.

She didn’t move. “You haven’t been answering the door,” she said.

It was a little girl’s voice. He relaxed a bit. “The music’s kinda loud. Hard to hear.” He moved his hand up and down a bit to remind her to take the candy. Get this over with.

But the little girl didn’t move.

“That’s not the reason.”

Damn it, this wasn’t nice. Not nice at all. “Look. You want your candy or not.”

She just looked at him. Ew. Creepy.

Creepy.

Screw it.

He had better things to do than deal with a six year old’s temper tantrum.

He shut the door, left her there on the step. No candy for you, you little —

Damn. Where was I . . .

Where is that vodka . . . and that girl . . .

He found her, finally, on the floor, behind the bed where they’d all piled their coats. She was half passed out but roused herself when she felt him kissing her, began kissing him back, eager, he stroked her neck then bit it, she moaned, he slid his hand down her neck to the top of her costume —

That was weird. He couldn’t get his hand inside her costume.

“Ow,” she said. “Ow, stop it, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry.” He pulled at the shoulder of her dress — it wouldn’t —

“OUCH.” She sat up now, her eyes still unfocused, her head lolling slightly. “That HURTS.”

What?

“It’s stuck,” he said. “Your dress is, like — stuck to you.”

She’d begun pulling at it herself.

“OW!” She said. “Ow, it hurts — ow!” She started crying. “OW!”

He stared at her pulling at her dress.

And then he had a horrible thought.

A horrible thought.

And he looked down at his sleeve.

The long satiny sleeve of his shirt, the vampire shirt —

He touched the cuff.

And realized as he touched it that something was very very wrong.

And he cried out, grabbed the edge of the cuff and pulled but it was fused to his skin, it hurt to pull the sharp pain and he cried out again and then heard around him that nobody was laughing any more, they were screaming all screaming, screaming and their screams were joined with his own, the loudest screaming in his ears his own scream

Booking Through Thursdays. Wake Up!

Posted on by

This week’s prompt:

What’s the hardest/most challenging book you’ve ever read? Was it worth the effort? Did you read it by choice or was it an assignment/obligation?

Didn’t have to think hard about this one — it was James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And I read it by accident.

I read voraciously as a kid, and it must have been summer, because it was mostly during the summer that I used to mine the Oxford town library for things to read.

And I ended up taking home this enormous book, probably because the title seemed vaguely familiar . . . and yes, I read it. Every word.

I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13.

I had no idea what it was about. lol

I should probably re-read it . . .

(Side note — it just occurred to me —Finnegans Wake (koff) is one of those books where you don’t have to say the author’s name . . . like War and Peace or The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick . . . I wonder if there are any books written in the last 20 years that are that much a part of the lexicon?)

Nanowrimo. What’s a realistic time commitment?

Posted on by

What’s a realistic time commitment?

To get to 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to produce an average of 1,667 words every day. No question, NaNoWriMo requires a time commitment! The question is, how much?

I know about how fast I write for the day job, but for that I edit as I go — which is a NaNoWriMo No-No.

So I decided to get a quick reality check — I posted a question on the NaNoWriMo forums to ask veterans how much time they typically need to keep pace with that 1,667/day output rate.

Click the link to read peoples’ answers, but here’s my takeaway:

  • Most people should figure to set aside about 2 hours a day writing time. But note the caveats below!
  • There’s a huge variation in word production speed! Some of the fastest can churn out 2,000 words/hour. The slowest do 500/hour or less. It might be a good idea to run a “test” on your own writing speed before Nov. 1 so you know about how fast you can write.
  • People don’t always write at the same speed. Sometimes the words flow quickly. Other times they don’t. Don’t be surprised if your writing speed is slower at times–and you might want to set aside some extra chunks of time to “catch up” afterward if you hit a slow period.

One last thing: writing time is only one piece of the time commitment. You may also need some planning/thinking-about-the-novel time. I know I write much faster when I have a map in my head of where I’m going . . .

Personally, I’m going to get up early the entire month of November in order to make sure I have extra time I’ll need to keep pace. After all, who needs sleep? ;-)

NaNoWriMo 2011 planning update…

Posted on by

My NaNoWriMo prep is moving along nicely. I now have a dozen characters: two major, three supporting, and seven minor.

I have a sense as well of themes, which include pursuing perfection/perfection as the enemy of the good — literally! Think Dr. Faustus ;-) — and the tension between trying to live from the head vs. trying to live from that other Self, whatever it is.

My characters are all golfers, which means the book will probably get pegged as a golf novel, but my goal of course is for it to split the seams of any genre. There will be romance, and there will be comedy, and there will be Big Ideas if you care to look for them. If  even non-golfers will find it fun to read, I’ll be the happiest writer on the planet.

Can’t wait to get started :-)

Booking Through Thursday: Vacation Reading

Posted on by

This week’s prompt:

Do your reading habits change when you’re on vacation? Do you read more? Do you indulge in lighter, fluffier books than you usually read? Do you save up special books so you’ll be able to spend real vacation time with them? Or do you just read the same old stuff, vacation or not?

For me, the breakdown is pleasure reading vs. utilitarian.

Not that I don’t read for pleasure other times as well — but vacations are about rewards, and what’s a more delicious reward than to read for the sheer pleasure of it?

Incidentally, some of my most satisfying vacation reads were when I was younger, during family vacations.

We used to meet up with various cousins on the Outer Banks of North Carolina; we’d spend a week there sharing a rented cottage (or two!)

One year I’d just discovered Raymond Chandler — so before the trip I went to the library and borrowed copies of every single Raymond Chandler novel. I read Chandler in the car, I read Chandler in the cottage, and I read Chandler on the beach — periodically turning my book upside down to knock out the grains of sand that collected in the crease between the pages near the spine.

By the time we got back to New York State, I’d read them all.

Another year I read everything I could get my hands on by V.S. Pritchett (btw if you haven’t sampled his short stories you are missing out big time).

Pure pleasure reading, and all the moreso for being immersive.

I really ought to do it again sometime soon . .

NaNoWriMo, or: Just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean I’m not going to try it

Posted on by
National Novel Writing Month!

Fifty thousand words in 30 days. Because what could possibly go wrong?

Just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean I’m not going to try it

If you’re a writer . . .

Or have even thought about being a writer . . .

And have spent any time at all kicking around the Interwebs over the past several years . . .

You’ve probably stumbled across this: the phenom known affectionately as NoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month!

It’s a movement. It’s a website. It’s a community.

It’s a way to invite public shame if you fail to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days.

I tried NaNoWriMo once before — in 2006. I lasted five days. Posted my progress each day on this blog ’til my effort met its early and ignoble end.

I have a new strategy, this year.

You’re allowed to lay some groundwork — an outline, for example — before you get started.

As it happens, I don’t find outlines helpful for writing fiction. Either the outline has to be so complete that it is basically the entire novel, or it has big gaps — and big gaps are the enemy of NaNoWriMo success, at least for me, because that’s what slows me down: I hit a gap and don’t know how to fill it and freeze.

So I’m going to try something different.

I’m going to pre-create a bunch of characters. (Already started, little buggers are wandering around in my head like they own the place.)

I’m going to create a handful of predestined events. (Got some of those already in place, too. I know there’s going to be a guy dead on a golf course — maybe it was an accident, maybe not. I know there’s going to be a member-guest golf tournament. I know there’s going to be people who fall in love ;-). And I know there’s going to be a winning lottery ticket. At least, there will be someone who think it’s a winning ticket — only he can’t remember where he put it. Think “where the heck did I put my car keys?” only a tad more urgent.)

And then, on November 1, I’m going to turn the characters loose and report what happens to them as they knock into those events and each other.

So we’ll see. Perhaps I’ll last only five days again . . .

But maybe I’ll be a bit more successful this time.

So how about you? Have you ever tried NaNoWriMo? If not, why not? And if yes, how did it go?