NaNoWriMo 2010: It's me but in video form

NaNoWriMo 10210: "Secret"

     "Momma, I have a secret.” The girl’s curls bounced as her head bobbed back and forth. Blonde pig tails made her head look abnormally square. “But no one can know,” she said.
     “Sweetie, you can tell me. I promise not to say a word to anyone.” Her mother looked down at her blue eyed daughter, a color so rich even the ocean’s depth could not compare.
     The little girl started to sway back and forth as a devious smile crossed her face. Her pink dress swished softly as her hand caressed the hemline. “I don’t know mama.” She said. She shrugged her shoulders and bit her bottom lip. The dress moved upward as she shrugged exposing soft white knees, a porcelain doll with skin practically crafted to perfection.
     Her mother kneeled down, scrunched her nose and brushed it against her daughter’s. She smelled like clean skin and powder which made her mother grin for raising such a perfect replica of herself.
     “You can tell me anything baby.” Her mom said with conviction.
     She looked around and gestured for her mother to come in close. Those brilliant blue eyes twinkled as her mother moved in. The little girl cupped her hand around her mom’s ear, ready to impart her secret through a hushed whisper which tickled her mother’s skin.
     She grinned as her breath pushed through her dainty vocal cords, “It wasn’t the dog.”

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NaNoWriMo 10210: "Gloves"

     I looked at those gloves. They stood for everything I hated. They were prim and proper. White and pure, everything I was not. But I sat and looked at them. The poof under me contoured my curves, my knees together and tight but ankles spread wide in protest. My thumb and forefinger pulled at my bottom lip. Would I go through with it? I thought. It was more than a thought then. I remembered how nothing was right. The dress was too tight, my heels too tall, and those gloves sat in front of me like a final mockery of everything I’d ever wanted to do with my life.
     “I can’t do it.” I said crossing my legs. “I just can’t.”
     “Mon cher, it’s not the time to have these thoughts.”
     “Daniel, you don’t understand.” I picked up the white gloves and held them, fingers caressed each silk hem. “Did you?”
     “Not for a second,” Daniel shook his head as his thick Louisiana accent floated from his lips like leaves from a Live Oak drifting on the bayou. “Cheri, it’s normal to be scared but de’s thoughts, they do you no good.”
     “There are so many things I won’t get to do.”
     “How you know that?”
     “I just do Daniel. He’s boring.” I placed the gloves in my lap. “What if I want to go to Paris? He’ll tell me he has to work.”
     “True, but Chari, you love him no?” Daniel dipped his head and looked at me with those green eyes, like moss under a shade tree.
     “I…” my cheeks flushed pink. I pulled the gloves up to my face letting the cool silk press against my hot skin.
     “You cannot fool me mon cheri.”
     I closed my eyes and I could see him standing there, the oak trees branches swaying in the breeze as the sun drizzled through the leaves. The table behind the priest filled with white roses and green moss. I could smell the earth as I watched my fiancée smile at me. Greens and browns swirled together bringing only him into focus. I opened my eyes. Daniel stood there and smiled.
     “How ‘bout we get you down that isle.”

-End-

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More NaNoWriMo 10210 prompts

NaNoWriMo 2010

We have ten business days leading up to NaNoWrimo. There are several new things I'm doing this year to promote NaNoWrimo which you'll see next month. One of the things I'm doing in October is Ten Days till NaNo 2010. I'll be writing ten flash fiction/short stories/whatever I feel for the next ten business days. Each day will be taken from a prompt below. I hope you enjoy my knuckle cracking while I gear myself up to NaNoWriMo!

1. Evidence
2. I'm here
3. Funeral
4. Puppy Love
5. Gloves
6. Blackboard
7. Muse
8. Magic
9. Clean
10. Secret

My NaNoWrimo handle is *snort* you've guessed it surferartchick. Feel free to buddy me!

Novel News

Image by [phil h] via Flickr

It’s now the middle of June and it’s time for me to start thinking about NaNoWriMo. Last year I didn’t think I was going to participate in National Novel Writing Month mainly because I didn’t have a clue of what I was going to do. That is until I had a funny dream that took me a month to outline the basic plot. Well this morning on my way into work, my muse struck me with the beginning of a new novel. My muse has a habit of hitting me over the head with a hammer on occasion and today it was while I passed a crop of tall, foreboding, and dense corn -- a perfect place to hide a body. Or in my case stumble upon it while harvesting.

So naturally I’ve started to think about outlining for NaNoWriMo. After all it was last year’s product of NaNoWriMo that has launched my hopeful novel writing career. Outlining is a new thing that I’ve been doing. When writing for a newspaper or blogs outlining isn’t really that important. Your articles are short (usually) and you have in your head what you want to say. On the other hand when you are writing something as long and as detailed as an 80k+ novel things usually get confused. Inconsistencies pop up in the least likely of places and some in the most blatantly obvious places. While NaNoWriMo is a marathon of writing and these inconsistencies tend to creep in anyways, it is the outline that keeps the majority of the story in place and correct. A great editor will help with the other selective reading omissions after you’ve bribed and pleaded enough to get on their nerves.

With that said, the other novel news that I have is that my current work in progress has progressed to an editing in progress. I’ve sent it off and it’s going though the ringer with another set of eyes that are not tied so closely to the project!

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