Let me just go down on the record saying this: NanoWrimo is no joke. My original thinking: oh, a novel in a month? Nooo problem. 50,000 words you say? Sure! Of course! Why not?

Then it becomes very clear that life is going to get in your way and you are going to struggle to get close to 2,000 words per day finished on this project. Starting with a half-baked idea and still feeling half-baked with it when you hit page 20? Sure, that will happen too. You will want to give up. You will give up….for a day. And then you will start writing again with absolutely no direction. You will forge yourself a path, take a machete to the weeds in your way and get to marching. Onward, forward. I insist.

And then, and then! Today happens. 8,000 words in and I realize it will be much more satisfying to do what most might consider downright stupid:

I’m starting over.

Enter insane, overzealous guffawing here. Yes, yes! I am going back to word one with a storyline that is of much more interest to me. One must be at least somewhat satisfied to keep going, and my satisfaction with story #1 has been worn down to a nub. A nub which, when touched, will disintegrate into dust. I’m done! And with that, I begin. Again.

Once more, with feeling!

Please enjoy an excerpt from my NanoWrimo endeavor, a fiction story titled “The West Side Streetcar Desire Story.”

1.
There is a bullet hole in the window, and this is how I chose my seat on the bus. Perfect and dangerous. I sink my body against the glass, run a finger down the hairline extending from the fragmented burst. If they shot once, maybe they’ll shoot again. This is all I can think about. It’s 3:30 am.

I’m in the middle of a dare: leave town before your lover wakes up.

I do a quick check—shoe(scrunch and flex toes), back pocket of jeans(dash left hand to ass), and underwear(drag two fingers against the hip elastic). Altogether, three hundred and seventy-five in cash, my license, and one ATM card(though Stella and I had a joint checking account so this piece of plastic is theoretically void to me, invisible square). The ticket purchased will take me halfway to the water. That’s it. That’s all I had. That and a bag filled with only what I wanted(or deemed kind of necessary) to take. I twist the nylon handles around one ankle beneath my seat, turn my coat into a pillow and treat the frayed hoodie as a blanket. My arms fold into the stomach. They feel stupid and empty, birdlike. Also, you should know, I have no idea what I’m doing.

I consider sleeping, but Greyhound bus seats are so damn uncomfortable. I think about the monkey experiment with the surrogate mothers—one cloth and one wire, how they end up starving for the sake of soft touch. The bus seats are like this—a wire embrace with full breast. Just not enough. I’d rather starve. I can’t reel in the absurdity of thought. I’m lonely. Between the few minutes of forced R.E.M., I stare out the window. Maybe the sun will come up soon—it’s hard to tell.

I’m replaying the impending discovery in my head. I tend to dwell in cinema. Stella will roll over and reach for me, wake up and wait and then the silence will make her worry. Will she worry; does Stella worry? I can’t remember. Or Stella will sleep through the night, maybe sleep longer than normal. There will be the afternoon sun coming into the bedroom, a dash of it falling on the clothes I left behind, the floor. She will see this and know. Or Stella will wake around eight like normal, too early. Make coffee. Stand in the kitchen and witness, take some breaths. And nothing.

Nanoooooo Wrimooooo(as I prefer to call it) has begun! And yes, I started writing at 3-something a.m. from the Greyhound bus station in Columbus as predicted. I just finished typing up the handwritten beginning, and boo–I can’t update the wordcount on my NanoWrimo site from here at work. Oh well. Just know that the word count is climbing, and I’ll update soon. I will share some of my work on a weekly basis(but not all of it, just because).

Tonight I climb into ye olde trusty chariot (aka Greyhound) and head to Ohio for a quick trip to see the family. It’s been…months, really. I’m hoping some quality time will do my spirit some good. One can always use a little rejuvenation I suppose. My niece Maddie is growing up so fast…I wonder if she remembers me. I hope so. Expect pictures (and lots of them) upon my return.

Tomorrow is November 1st, which means NaNoWriMo begins, hooray! Hooray and GULP. Commence cartoonish collar pulling and embellished nervous swallowing here. The goal of NaNoWriMo: to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November(or a 50,000 word beginning of a novel). Obtaining this goal means writing something like, oh, 1,666 words per day. Something like that. Editing? Not the point here. The point is to write and write every day. Something interesting about NaNoWriMo this year: CreateSpace, a self-publishing company, is now offering anyone who completes the mission a single, free paperback copy of their manuscripts, with the option to use the proof to sell through Amazon. Sweet, yes?

NaNoWriMo has been going on for quite some time—since 1999 (and let me just say wow—it’s weird to express a sentiment such as “quite some time” in reference to the year 1999, but there you have it). In 1999, there were 21 participants. In 2007, an estimated 101,767 people threw words down. This is my first time having a go at it and I’m quite excited.

I like that the project starts on a day that I will be out of town, away from the laptop. Removed from the normal day to day environment. I’m going to have to start by hand, and knowing me, I will write the first sentence at the Columbus greyhound station while they refuel the bus. Somewhere around 3:30am.

My brain has decided to gather all ideas into one big wine jug and today I’m taking big swigs of it. Nothing stands out yet, but nothing has to. We shall see how that road begins tomorrow. I’m thinking about posting excerpts of the project as it develops. We’ll see about that too. Of course, if anyone would like to me to share it with them, please let me know. Maybe I can do a weekly update. Hmm.