Capital G Geek

I finally finished my 50,000 words on Saturday night, a whole day early. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to finish this year, because I had fallen quite far behind. I did, however, exert an heroic effort, and won. (yay me.) This effort started Friday evening, when I wrote two thousand words before going to bed. It was so bad, that towards the end, I was writing with my eyes closed. On more than one occasion, I wrote the same sentence multiple times, and had to erase it. I did much better on Saturday. I wrote 9217 words, with several breaks. While writing, I averaged over a thousand words an hour. I’m happy to say that I can now feel the last three fingers of my left hand once again.

Two things significantly hampered my writing this year. The first, fallout from ENRON. Sarbaines-Oxley. We have been implementing new internal controls, and I have had a part of getting it running to the satisfaction of the auditors. Definitely non-trivial and time consuming. Hence, I have been completely unable to write at work at all. If I stayed at my desk during lunch to try, someone would find me.

The second cost an entire Saturday of writing. I had already fallen behind by a bit, and had been counting on catching up. It was not to be. A friend of a friend needed a broken car hauled to their house, and I voluntold to do it. After that, things started going wrong. The first contact I had for a car dolly fell through the morning I was to pick it up, costing a few hours of scrambling. The alternate contact was for a full trailer, but an hour off my preferred route. Two hours total for the side trip. The car was obnoxiously parked, requiring me to putz around with the trailer, trying to get it lined up. The winch wouldn’t work properly while hooked to an undercharged battery (go figure). Then, when I was ready to unload the car, it wouldn’t go into neutral. Half an hour on the phone, and I found that it had a manual override for the electronic interlock – the battery was dead, so the shifter wouldn’t release. A little prying on the console, and we engaged the override, dropping the car at the shop. Finally finished, I drove home, picked up my Wife, drove the truck back (full tank of gas, of course), and then returned home. Total time – fourteen hours. And that’s fourteen hours, after getting a two hour delayed start. Needless to say, I didn’t write much that day.

But it’s over, the frantic part, anyway. And I’m enjoying the story.

More than a week into NaNo08, and I’ve finally gotten an excerpt that I like.  It tells nothing about my story, but that’s ok, because I’m not sure that I’ve actually told any of the story yet.  Backstory is a pain.  15,000 words, and all of it backstory.  Bummer.

I’ve put a wordcount widget in my sidebar, so you can see how I’m doing.

Now to the excerpt…

In the kitchen, he sat across the table from Rebecca.
‘Do you get the feeling you’re being watched?’ she said in a mock whisper.
‘Daddy!!!’ his two older children screamed as they ran to meet him.  He scooped both of them up, and trotted to the living room.
‘Thomas, Margaret, Have you been eating your vegetables?’
‘Oh yes, daddy.  Every night.  Sometimes we even ask for seconds’ They both said.
‘Have they been?’ he asked his wife.
‘Oh yes, they ate like little piglets.  But not too many vegetables.’ she replied.
‘Nooooooo!’ screamed the children.
‘The only one way to tell if children are being fed properly’ he said in an extremely serious tone. ‘Is to see how high they … BOUNCE!’ he dropped both of them on the couch.
They completed the evening ritual, including a bedtime story, when Margaret asked ‘Daddy, did you bring anything for us?’
‘You’re not supposed to ask that til tomorrow.’ Thomas whispered to her.
‘Do you know where I was?’ Stephen asked them
‘Memsis’ Margaret said
‘Memphis’ Thomas corrected
‘Memphis, Tennessee’ Stephen said ‘On the Mighty Mississippi River.’
‘The Mississippi River, the same one that Tom Sawyer rode down?’ Thomas asked, his eyes wide.
‘The very same one.  And one of the things I got for you – both of you, Margret so you can suck your lip back in – is a new story about Huckleberry Finn, who is one of Tom Sawyer’s friends.’
‘Will you read it tonight?’ they asked.
‘Not tonight.  It’s still in the railcar.  Tomorrow night, I promise.  Tonight, I have a sick friend to look after.’
‘Do we have to go to bed now?’ Thomas asked.
‘No, you can play for a while longer’ Rebecca said ‘As long as you play quietly, and nicely. We’ll be up in a little while to tuck you in.’
Stephen and Rebecca were part way down the stairs when they heard Thomas ‘You heard that, we’re suppose to play quietly.  If we play real quiet they’ll forget about coming back up, and we can play ALL NIGHT!’
Rebecca looked at Stephen. ‘Did you ever do that?’ she said with a grin ‘Because I know they didn’t get it from ME.’
‘I don’t know’ Stephen said seriously. ‘All we had to play with in the old country was rocks and sheep droppings.’
‘YOU!’ she said, giving him a shove.
‘Come to think of it, they may have all been sheep droppings.  I don’t remember many rocks.’
She shoved him again, propelling him into their living room.

Hope you get as much of a chuckle out of it as I did.