Day 19 and my word count is right on the mark!! Yee Haw!!
What a feeling of exhilaration to think I may actually finish this book after 40 years of thinking about it!
Talk about gestation!
Watch this space...
ARE YOU into NaNoWriMo? Maybe you SHOULD be!!
by Terry 27 Replies latest jw friends
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lalliv01
Terry, you are headed towards an envious achievement, go for it!
I think if anyone can do it, you can.
Lalliv01
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Terry
I can't believe I'm two-thirds finished with this book. Wow. Who'duh thunk it?
It ended up being a fictionalized personal memoir of my time in prison in Seagoville from nineteen sixty-seven to sixty-nine.
It only became possible to write when I changed my own name to a fictional name! Strange, eh?
I could be critical and more objective and really give myself a distanced look.
This is great therapy too. I've gone back a looked at events in my family and childhood that played a huge part in all my religious decisions as well.
In about ten days I plan to be very proud of myself!
Anybody else still writing in the NaNoMo program? (National Novel in a Month?)
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Cicatrix
Go Terry!
Nope, I had to quit. A family member had emergency surgery for brain cancer, then when I got back from there, I got stuck working six in a row. Then got sick. I give UP. But I do have a great start on my manuscript, and will work on it at a little slower pace around everything else that's happening in my life right now.
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Abandoned
This is my fourth year doing NaNoWriMo. This year I'm doing a story called Not (re) Quite (ed) Love. It's a cross between a psychological thriller and a romance novel.
If you want to read about my NaNo experience, here's my blog. Here's my official NaNoWriMo profile.
Here's an excerpt from my work this year (unedited)
Chapter Fifteen Kids playing. That’s what Brenda thought about as she heard her first sounds since the accident. Tennis shoes against concrete. Heavy breathing sparkled with high-pitched shrieks and laughter. Lots of laughter. She had no idea how long it had been since the Semi crashed into her, but the pain had begun to be unbearable. Her mind must have given up trying to block it. It had been settled mostly in her lower back and abdomen, but now it was everywhere. Even her ear lobes ached.
So the sound of kids playing gave her a much needed distraction and a ray of hope. If she could hear them playing, maybe they’d find her. Maybe they’d see the car and come to investigate. She was still in the car, wasn’t she? She didn’t remember getting out. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have been able to move herself. But she wasn’t in a car. Those kids were close by. Close enough to where they would have noticed a recently wrecked car with a person dying inside. So how did she get out? Who would help her out of her car after an accident and then not take her to a hospital or call an ambulance? Unless… She shuddered. Her whole body shook and the pain was intense. Unless the accident wasn’t an accident.
She nearly passed out from the fear. “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” echoed in from somewhere. The kids were closer now. How could they be so close and still not notice her? Where was she.
Everything was black. She didn’t know if it was because her eyes weren’t working properly or if she was somewhere completely devoid of light. She had assumed that here eyes were damaged, but she wondered if that were the case. Up until this point, she’d assumed she’d still been inside her car. Now she wondered about that too. Reaching to her left, searching for some clue as to where she was, she ran her hand against something hard. It was smooth but rough. And cold. Very cold. Concrete! She was seated on concrete. She ran the palm of her hand against the concrete until it came to a wall. It was concrete too. Concrete floor and concrete wall? Where on earth could she be? Still, she could hear the kids playing.
“Bobby, what are you doing? I’m gonna tell momma.” The kids voiced sounded louder than ever.
“No you’re not. I’ll throw daisy in the river if you do,” said a boy’s voice. There were two of them. Yes, that made sense. Two little kids, one boy and one girl. That explained the slight difference in the high-pitched shrieks as they were playing.
“You better not do anything to Daisy. You better not,” said the girl and then silence.
Footsteps. She could hear the footsteps close now. They were very close. “Susie, help me push.”
“No! Do it yourself. I don’t want to go in there anyway. Let’s just go play some more back by the creek.”
“No, come over here. I almost have it. Come on, I just need you to help me.”
“Bobby, I’m not going in there. And I don’t care what you do to Daisy, I’m going to tell mom if you don’t stop that and come with me right now.”
“OK, OK, I’m sorry about what I said about Daisy. I wouldn’t throw her in the river anyway.” Brenda began to shake. What if they just left? What if they didn’t find her? She must not be out in the middle of everything. She must be out of the way. Would anyone find her?
“Come on Susie. Just gimme a hand and then I’ll play whatever you want to. OK?”
“Well … I don’t know. I don’t like this.”
“Please. Please.”
“OK, but if anything bad happens, I’m telling momma.”
Brenda breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Nothing bad’s gonna happen. I just want to see what’s in there. Maybe there’ll be a ghost.”
“There better not be a ghost.”
Just then, Brenda remembered that she could talk. If she could hear them, all she had to do was say something and they’d hear her. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her throat was too dry. She moistened it with her spit and tried again. Finally, words came out but they were too garbled to make any sense.
“What was that,” Susie asked.
“What was what? What’s wrong with you? Nothing’s gonna happen,” Bobby replied.
“I heard something, something scary. I don’t think we should continue with this,” his little sister insisted.
Brenda began to shake again. What if instead of making them want to investigate more she scared them off? What would she do then? She wondered if she should try to speak again. Maybe her voice was too weak or maybe her vocal cords were damaged in the crash. She needed help but her head hurt and she couldn’t think clearly. Call out again? Don’t call out again? Call out again? Don’t call out again? The sweat poured out of her and made her feel cold on top of everything else.
“Just grab a hold of this and help me pull,” Bobby instructed. “Nothing’s gonna happen. Let’s just open it up a crack. If we see anything, we can run away and it won’t have enough room to get at us. OK?”
There was hesitation while Susie pondered over her brother’s logic. “Ummm, OK, I guess. But if we see anything, anything at all, we take off running. Right?”
“Of course! Now give me a hand.”
Brenda listened to the breathing and grunts of the two kids. Whatever they were pulling on, it must have been slippery or small because they seemed to lose their grip a lot. “Come on, I know we can do this, “Bobby said and then grunted loudly.
Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Brenda cried out, “I’m here, I’m here, please help me.” That’s what it sounded like inside of her head. That’s the words her mind pictured. But what came out to the rest of the world and to Bobby and Susie in particular was more like a cross between a growl and a moan.
“I told you, now let’s get outta here,” Susie cried out, panic in her voice. Brenda listened to the sound of two sets of sneakers raced across concrete. And then there was silence. Painful silence. Deadly silence. -
Terry
Thanks for letting us read that! I wish more writers would share their talent here for us to enjoy.
Ever consider publishing?
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Abandoned
Wow, thank you Terry. I'm working on getting some things published right now. I have some non-fiction articles in print, but so far, I'm the only one promoting my fiction. I do hope to see my short story book come out soon. I wanted to get it done by Christmas, but I don't think I'll make that deadline. I still could, but my schedule is very full through the new year.
So how are you doing with your novel? Are you on schedule? I finally caught up a couple of days ago and feeling good.
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Abandoned
So how's it going Terry? I have about three thousand words to go and two days to do it in, so I'm on schedule.
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Terry
I finished!
Over fifty-thousand words and a day early!
I did it!
My tentative title is:
I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON
It is a prison memoir in novel form.
Now the editing and rewriting!
Hooraaaay!