They all sit, huddled around the small waiting room, waiting for news. In one room, their grandmother is fighting for her life after a fall and a broken hip. In another, their daughter is in labor with their first grandchild. The timing couldn’t be more perfect, or more imperfect.
Both are in surgery now. A hip replacement and an emergency C-section.
The whole family is stone silent, waiting for any kind of news, except for grandpa, at the window, his lips moving in silent prayer.
Someone is making their departure tonight. Who do you save?
Note: I had to look up what Earthflax was. It was a multifaceted search, but I learned something new!
To look at such a beauty, one wouldn’t think she could be so dangerous. As she sat there at the table, building her model airplanes and chewing on the end of her paintbrush, she looked so innocent.
He had no idea she would choke the air from his lungs, and make him feel like he was drowning. She was a dangerous poison, wrapped in a pretty pink package.
The planned expansion did not go as planned. Around every corner, another snag waited. Workers got hurt, plans got lost, people simply started to disappear. Still they pushed forward.
Despite the tragedy that surrounded the new building project, the foreman brought his daughter to work with him.
“Daddy,” she said, pulling on his sleeve as they looked out over the huge man made cavern deep into the earth. “The children want you to play with them too!”
He was too perfect. He could complete difficult tasks with ease, and do it all with a smile. There had to be something wrong with him.
For months, he had everyone else fooled, but she found out his secret when he slammed the stack of paperwork on her desk when no one else was looking his way. “I’ll need all those done by lunch. Thanks, babe.” Then with a wink and a thousand watt smile, he walked away.
Fraud! She thought as she dumped the stack in the garbage.
I have wanted to do a challenge like this for months, something to help me blog every day and flex some writing skills. I could not find anything that looked like fun, so I made one.
Here’s what I came up with:
I chose 31 random words, one for each day of the month (chosen from here.)
Each day I’ll try to tell a short story with 100 words or less. There might even be a little art involved, who knows!
Well, another month of writing and goals done. April is always a bit of a tough month for me, with difficult anniversaries, but it ended up working out well in the end.
Goals from April:
Camp NaNoWriMo: 40,180
Ghost House Heart: 14,770
I finished Under Grey Skies with a total of 138,799 words and 11,247 words of notes. ( with 24,501 words during Camp NaNo)
Goals for May
Continue Ghost House Heart
Start Editing previous books in the series
Write 30,000 words of anything and everything (Look out for new blog content!)
This month was hit and miss to start, but in the end I smashed goals! Finally, after months, this beast is complete.
Compared to January and February, March seemed to move very slowly. With everything that’s been going on with the world and the virus, and home life and work life (yes, I am still working), it’s been hectic.
Here’s how I did on my goals from February:
I did not finish Under Grey Skies
I did reach the 75% mark and renew my interest in writing and finishing this novel
I prepared for Camp NaNo in the best way I knew how
By letting the idea swirl around in my head and waiting as patiently as I could for April to arrive.
I did not write a short story by hand
Unfortunately
I did however write a total of 18,360 words for the month in various projects.
Here are my plans for April:
Camp NaNoWriMo
Ghost House Heart: Minimum of 30K words (with little to no filler)
Finish Under Grey Skies
Every chapter I finish gets me closer to the end and it’s getting exciting. I have an outline and I’m ready to get this thing finished!
Week Two is over and gone. Thank goodness! Because it struck with a vengeance.
Week Two is traditionally when the act of writing gets difficult and writers reach walls or struggle through their drafts. I am no exception to that, but with a few more issues during the week.
Day Eight: 2,525 (I broke a finger that night at Judo)
Day Nine: 1,309 (Spent 2.5 hours at CHC and 1 hour at the local hospital waiting for an x ray, went to a write in with buddy taped fingers)
Day Ten: 1,015 (Worked, updated word count late)
Day Eleven: 1,945 (Worked, Busy AF)
Day Twelve: 1,781 (Slept all day, thanks nightshift, slept all night)
Day Thirteen: 759 (The first day I was under 1K, and officially behind on my goal of 120K; Also, hit 50K.)
Day Fourteen: 1,219 (Slept all day, woke up way after midnight, slept until morning. Now super behind on my 120K goal)
Total: 51,219
Positives: I hit 50K and officially “won” NaNoWriMo. I now have a direction after dragging my feet for a few days. I have a few days off from work where I can make it up.
Negatives: My fingers are buddy taped, making typing on a keyboard a real fun experience and not very fast. They will be taped for the next 3-6 weeks (ALL of November!)
Positive: Week 3 is almost here and I have a direction again.
One week of NaNoWriMo 2019 is now completed for all the writer’s working on their novels this year.
I am very happy to say that it has been a very productive week for me, despite having a few “low” days.
My goal for this month is 120K, twice the goal of 50K and then some.
Here’s how I did this week:
Day One: 5,255
Day Two: 10,045
Day Three: 4,480
Day Four: 5,337
Day Five: 5,383
Day Six: 2,518
Day Seven: 7,648
Total: 40,666
This first week has been amazing and I’m actually ahead of my 120K monthly goal. I’m hoping I can keep up this momentum through everything else going on this month, and keep up my drive after I pass the first 50K.
We’ll see how it goes it week two.
Happy writing!
My daily word count looks like a ghost. The zero on day eight is telling me “You Should Be Writing!”
For the first time this month, I’ve done something I have never done. I finished Inktober, but it was Inktober with a twist. In October, I participated in Inktober (Writer Edition). Fifty words of fiction daily.
I did it with a twist yet again, and added ink drawings as well.
Here’s what I learned:
Writing and Drawing are Separate Arts
I’ve been a writer for years, but art has never been my forte. I could look at the prompts each day and come up with an idea pretty quickly of what I wanted to write. Coming up with what I wanted to draw was completely different. Knowing I wasn’t the best at drawing, I knew I had to be careful in what I picked. The first few drawings were terrifying, but then I let go and started to have fun with them.
Stick Figures Can Save You
I am not a professional artist by a long shot. I have friends who can draw the most beautiful realistic images and it makes me so jealous. There were few pieces that I chose to draw that involved people, but when it did, I used stick figures. Why? Because I could, and most drawings from this month took ten minutes or less. I’m a busy person and would rather get the drawings done rather than perfect.
Focuses Can Change
The first few days, I was concerned about the drawings. I knew I had the words right in the prompts. I knew what I was going for, but drawing was a terrifying feat that I couldn’t even begin to fathom for the first week or so. About a week in, my focus changed to the words. The prompts, in my opinion, became more concept and less concrete so I had to think them through. Now that I made it to the end, I’m wondering when the prompt list will come out for next year.
Size Matters
In the past when I have attempted Inktober, I bought a new fresh sketchbook and told myself I would create these massive pieces of art with barely any time to spend that was needed on massively beautiful pieces of art. I would manage for a few weeks, or a couple of days, then just give up and tell myself “I’m definitely not an artist.”
This year, I went really simple. Two pieces of printer paper folded into 16 squares. 4 Pigma Micron pens in black, red, light blue and navy. One Paper-Mate 4 in 1 ballpoint pen in green only. With those simple supplies, I created masterpieces that were 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 inches.
Fifty Words Can Tell a Decent Story
I have to admit, I started Inktober (Writer Edition) a little before October. I wrote several pieces ahead of the days they were to be posted (but I did only do one ink drawing a day). When I first started, I was terrified. Fifty words only?! How can I tell a decent story with only fifty words?! Having done NaNoWriMo for the past ten years, I’ve been under the impression that more words is much better than less.
Inktober (Writer Edition) proved me wrong. And in a big way.
With only fifty words per prompt, it made me be creative. It made me get rid of filler words and repetitions and words that just didn’t fit. It made me a better writer in merely 31 days, simply because it became automatic after a while to go “This is much longer than fifty words”. I had to cut words and edit mercilessly to make it just 50 words. No more, no less.
This challenge was definitely fun, and I learned a lot. I can’t wait to participate again next year!
You can follow the saga of Inktober (Writer Edition) here
But now, we’re off to bigger things. November and NaNoWrimo.
October is swiftly coming to a close and November is beckoning. Thousands of people are putting away their ink pens and pulling out their laptops instead.
October has been very productive for me. Here’s what I’ve done:
October Results:
Finished The Kiss: 128,888 (Notes:12,678)
Inktober: 1665
Total: 44,415
Other Things:
Edits: I have printed out the first book of the series and am finally beginning edits. This is the perfect timing seeing as book 9 (goal for November) is the mirror to book 1.
Inktober: Inktober was amazing! I had so much fun and I cannot wait for next year. There will be a post all about it later this week.
November Goals
NaNoWriMo: I have a huge lofty goal of 120K, or finishing the whole novel in November, whichever goal comes first.
I’m keeping my goals for November few, since writing a whole book in a month is no easy task.
August has been a very interesting month for writing. I’ve been distracted by a fewcthins here and there and working on a few projects that have been super fun this month.
The Kiss: 25737
Seven short pieces for Hidge Week (You can start with Day One): 3507
This month was fun for writing and continuing my goals for writing at least a few words daily. I wrote every single day of August. There was one day I ended up writing 3 words. Other days I was able to write 3,000. It all depended on the day and what ended up popping up to distract me.
September Plans
September is quickly approaching and that means fall is on the way! With the seasons changing that means November (and NaNoWriMo) is on the way.
Here are my plans for September:
Getting things planned and organizing events for NaNoWriMo in my area.
Participating in Instawrimo on Instagram
Finishing The Kiss
Attending my first writing conference ever at the Central Coast Writer’s Conference.
He uses Binoculars because he is afraid to touch her. He’s afraid to talk to her, to face her head on. He’s scared because he fears she will laugh at him, reject him, avoid him.
He wants to talk to her, but the fear swallows him up whole. He finds that he likes watching her from afar.
The way she carries herself when no one else is watching. How calm and comfortable she is when no one else is around.
He wants to touch her, but she’s too far away.
Until she’s banging on his door at three in the morning.
I drove by the park where we used to hang out after school. It’s been years, but the playground is still standing, the rust crawling up from the sand and eating away the paint. The benches are still there, cracking with age, splintering away more and more with each rain.
The tree is still up. The same tree where we carved our initials in a jagged heart. The same tree where we shared our first kiss. The same tree where you told me you were leaving.
The list in her hands was old. The page crumpled up multiple times, as if shoved into a pocket or a fist several times. The names were scribbled in a quick scrawl, the red X’s across them a sign of something.
“What is this?” She asked, gazing up from the list at the man in uniform before her.
“A hit list,” he said, adjusting his belt around his hips. “My boss wants me to keep you safe and these men are–” he let a brief smirk cross his lips, “–were after you.”
She put her hands to her hips. “Obviously my father doesn’t think I can take care of myself,” she said, unsheathing the knife from it’s place at her hip. “But he doesn’t know about my list.”
Ten minutes later, she placed a red X over his name.
He rolls the dice in his hands like they mean something to him, blows on them like they really are hot between his palms, says prayers in as many languages as he knows, as if he believes in all those higher powers.
It still isn’t enough and he loses his gamble with Death. Not with his own life, of course, but with hers.
“There’s nothing else we can do,” The doctors tell him, but he sees the dark cloaked figure staring at him from the corner of the hospital room.
“Double or nothing,” he whispers as soon as the doctors are out of earshot.
Eyes with more life than he has ever seen behind that dark cloak stare back at him, alive with a curiosity.
