Raining Nouns and Verbs
With respect to NaNoWriMo, Thursday and Friday were drought days for me. There were plenty of dark clouds, but the resulting rain was minimal, a whole 347 words. The storm finally arrived yesterday. I hope it continues for a few days.
As you may have noticed, the progress meter is gone. Apparently, the site hosting it ran out of bandwidth and took it down, which bummed me out. I was rather fond of it. Anyway, as a poor man's substitute, I replaced it with simple, manually updated word count. It not only counts days and words, but also the number of hours and cups of coffee required for this year's effort.
I'm still not clear where the story is going. I have many characters running around, each receiving equal time in the spotlight. I don't know if I was aiming for an ensemble piece like Love Actually, but it seems to be the novel's trajectory so far (without the charm and humor of the mentioned movie). Here is an excerpt from Thursday's writing:
They pulled Abel up to the beach and dropped him on the sand. He didn’t move. Johnny said, "Wait, I don't think he's breathing."
"You've got to be kidding me. He's not breathing? How many times do we have to save this guy? I mean, really, there must be a limit," said an exasperated Tommy. He was here to surf, not resuscitate people. This was completely unfair, all things considered.
Johnny gave him a look and said, "I don't know, but I'm not kidding. He's not breathing."
"Lazy bum!" said Tommy. Johnny bent down. Tommy cried, "Wait! Let me do it. You got to do it last time."
"Yeah, but last time you insisted that I do it," said Johnny.
"Well, that guy smelled fishy. Don't give me that face. Plus, I didn't want to accidentally kill him."
"And what, you aren't afraid to kill Abel?"
"I know, I know, but I have to overcome my fear of unintentionally killing people eventually. Abel would be proud."
"On Abel's behalf, I'm going to disagree."
"Whatever! Now, step aside and let me get to it," said Tommy, kneeling down and taking deep breathes to calm his nerves.
That's when the surfer girl raced up to them, knocked Tommy aside and administered CPR to Abel. Her name, as she would later tell them, was Abigail Jones or Abby for short.
Now, wouldn't it be something if after saving Abel, the two were to start dating, eventually marry, buy a bungalow on the very beach where they met and have three children, thirteen grandchildren and forty-five great grandchildren? It would be something, wouldn't it?
Unfortunately, a shark ate Abby three hours later.
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