Last year, I tried to write a novel for National Novel Writer’s Month, below is the word count widget, and I’m not sure how it works yet, but hopefully that will be self explanatory. I’ll put this on the sidebar like I’m a real blogger.
Last year, I didn’t make it. I burned out at about 20K, and to tell the truth, half of that was already written. I wanted to finally finish a novel I have been kicking around in my head for more than ten years now. This year, I’m going to take a short story, The Guardian , a disturbing ( at least to me) little story that I wrote some time ago and have always wanted to expand and explore. I have never tried to do this before, with any other storyline than the one I worked on last year.
I’m excited, a little nervous, and ready to exert my writing muscles a little, in what may be the biggest month of my life. You see, in the next few days, my girlfriend is having my first child. I am 42 years old, have been married once but had no children, and I am having a child in the next few days, (November 3rd is the due date). I don’t plan on expanding much on the birth of my child on this blog, I have ultrasound pictures posted , and will probably have another blog about my baby, this blog is about writing.
With one day left before the novel begins, I am trying to descend into that mindset in which I write. Doing it with all the distractions around me may be impossible, but I’m hoping that the urgency and the feeling that I am very ready to write again will push through it all.
Hope I bring some folks along for the ride.
ron
p.s. And since I think I’ve figured out the widget stuff, here’s another.
Okay, it’s probably not a big deal, but when I got to the library last night for the NanoWrimo meeting, the library was closed. When I came home I found an email on my Nano account saying they had a meeting the 24th, and the next one is Sunday at 2PM. I doubt I’ll be there though, during the Bears game???? This also tells me a little about my fellow authors.
Not sure what I expected, but I did send an email back saying that I would be interested in attending the next meeting if it’s not during a BEARS GAME. Call me shallow, but I’ve found it easy to schedule my time without stepping on the 16 times(plus playoffs) that the Bears play. It is only when I allow others to do it for me that I get cross ups.
I don’t remember coming here. Last thing I remember I was going up my basement steps, after putting in a load of laundry. I felt a twinge, I remember seeing my foot at a strange angle, the lights went out. Then I was here. (more…)
Level Seventeen was where I met her, in one of the enormous buildings off the street. I’d been there a few days, ducking in away from the gunfire and mayhem on the streets. Bodies lined the steps that I climbed to the front door, some dismembered and still, others writhing. Blood slickened the steps and made my climb precarious. I put my heel into the open, wailing mouth of a wounded soul for better traction. (more…)
It was a natural progression, I suppose.I quit going out because I would always see somebody I didn’t like. Each time I saw somebody I didn’t like in some place, I would never return there.Pretty soon there was no place left to go. (more…)
(My editorial comments in parens: This was written sometime around 1999.)
Silicon Window – RHarC (this is the old format, hehehe, not my aol name anymore)
It was 2 winters ago, right about this time, when the world was darkest. My arm was shattered in a way that I had never believed could happen, and so painful I rarely slept. (more…)
Demmy dug especially deep to bury his last breathing friend, Mutt. He was glad that the soil was moist and easy to clear away, as he wasn’t able to get the work out of a shovel that he once did.A voice drilled into his back. “Such a shame, such a shame.” (more…)
There is a train track running straight through the heart of my hometown. Put there during the steel age it might once have been a center of commerce, a contact to the coast of Lake Michigan and all the wealth it brought to the mid-west through Chicago.
In another time it carried tons of grain from our fertile fields. Luxurious passenger cars filled with the jet set of their era, crossed the fields to the West Coast. These days sixteen wheelers take our grain into the city and leave no reason for these thundering locomotives to give our small farm town pause. Still, they pass through with dizzying frequency, blaring their whistle all the way through town. (more…)
Whatever happened to NOVL Cub?Does anyone remember NOVL Cub? NOVL Gent? NOVL Moneeq? NOVL InRedShoes? (more…)
The Guardian
It was the regular Wednesday night meeting crowd at the Lutheran Church. Wednesday night is a busy meeting, like every drunk in town wants to check themselves out before the big drinking days. That’s why I go, so that on Thursday when I get the yearning for quarter draft night at Frogger’s, the meeting is still fresh on my mind. (more…)
