Nanowrimo Success (and a Bit of Nano Advertising)

I am happy to announce my Nanowrimo success. By the end of November, I clocked in at 50,201 words, though as usual, while my 50 thousand words are done, the actual story of my novel isn't done and will take probably another 20,000 words or so to complete. And again, as usual, I'm going to ignore my novel for at least a month, and work on something else (in this case, my 2012 Camp Nano).

Now, I'm going to take a little time right now to talk about that wondrous picture right above this. It's the "The OLL-Star badge for creative overachievers", which is to say, people who have done all three of the Office of Letters and Light's crazy month long projects. The one on top is for Nanowrimo (here), the one on the left is Camp Nanowrimo (here), and the one on the right is Script Frenzy. Nano is what I just finish, a month long dash for a 50,000 word novel in November. Camp Nano is pretty similar, except it's during either June or August, not November (and I've got to admit 50 thousand words is a lot more managable without school). Script Frenzy is a little bit different. The goal is still to produce a first draft in a month, but instead it's a 100 page script in April. Unfortunately for all the script writers out there, Script Frenzy is no longer being run.

I've participated in all three, Nano three times (counting last month), Camp Nano once, and Script Frenzy once. And I'll happily sing their praises from the mountain tops. I'd always wanted to write, but wanting to write, and actually writing are somehow miles apart. If you're a person who wants to write, but can't find the time or the motivation, try out Nano next year, or Camp Nano over the summer. For all the craziness and time consumption it takes, it's all worth it when you're able to get at least party of your story in writing by the end of the month.

And now I'll hop off my writer's soap box and get back to work.

Week Four: It's the Final Countdown

Cue the cheesy, but still ridiculously dramatic '80's song (it's here, if you're curious) because it's week four, and the end of month deadline is looming. I'd be more worried if this was a point where I was horribly behind (there have been a few points like that), but as of today, I'm on track at a bit over 48 thousand words, so as long as nothing calamitous stops me from writing tomorrow (knock on wood), I'll be fine.
By now, I'm coasting. I'm only half way into my plot, but I'm still on track with where I wanted my plot to go, none of my characters have decided to enact any mid-month rebellions, and I haven't had any real-life crises to slow me down.
So here's a section of my most recent writing. This section is a story being told to my main character, Sarah, by the human Vice President who became President, though President is mostly a ceremonial position with a dying constituency of 100 humans, after the President of the androids coordinated the successful assassination of  the former President. Remember it's a rough draft.

"So, what do you want to talk about? Regularly, since I'm President, I'd probably have to be pretty censored with you two, but heck, we'll all probably be dead by the time that you're done with that book," he said, shrugging, and looking over to Julius, "Well, you won't be dead, I guess."

President Clark's face dropped a bit after a second of silence.

"Sorry. That might've been a bit rude. Sorry, not much good at this. I wasn't really supposed to be the one doing things like this. Being President that is. I doubt I'd have much of a public mandate after Reynolds died. People just check that Robert Clark box because they don't care enough to choose anyone else. Not that anyone else runs," he said, leaning back in his chair. He didn't look particularly comfortable in the chair. Or in his office at all. He'd bumped his knee on the edge of the desk, and he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands now that he was sitting.

"So, what exactly do you want to talk about? I hear from John, or from Natasha more honestly that you went to visit him and he told you about his father's death. I mean, I could tell you a more specific, more adult version, but I don't think you'd get much from it," he said, grinning half of his pearly white smile. Even if he didn't act the role of the President, or he didn't like it, he sure looked the part.

"No, we don't really need two of the same story. And that story isn't really yours. Tell us one of your stories," I said, tucking my pen behind my ear.

"I don't really have many interesting stories. I know that's a strange thing for a President to say, but I became President after the meteor. So no wars, barely any domestic policy because how hard is it to make domestic policy in a country of one hundred and twenty one people? I don't have to organize public services, because the androids do all of the public services, I don't have to organize city building, because we've already got a city, and robots fix anything that breaks, I don't have to worry about agriculture or labor really or budget or anything because the androids take care of that all. My role is really just a liaison to the androids and a steady public figure in the lives of my constituents," President Clark said, clasping his hands over his desk, "The last real work I had to do was in the aftermath of Reynolds' assassination. I know it's sort of a related story to the one that you already have, but I could always tell you about what I had to do after President and Mrs. Reynolds were killed, though it's not exactly a happy story."

"If that's what inspires you to speak, that is different enough that it'd be a perfectly fine story," I said, pulling my pen from behind my ear to tap it on the side of my chair.

"Well it all started-- it-- um... Miss-- Miss, stop tapping," he said,  one hand slowly creeping up until it was clasped over his forehead.

"Oh, sorry."

"It's not a big deal. Just a pet peeve of mine," he said, shaking his head as though he was clearing it.

"Ah, but what was I about to say? Oh yeah, yeah. The aftermath of President Reynolds death."

The Reluctant Commander in Chief

It was strange. Reynolds was killed on a sunny day, and his funeral was on a day just as sunny. I felt like it should have been raining, pouring really, as I stood in front of his grave, holding his son's hand. But it wasn't. Birds were chirping, the skies were clear and I was President. I was President. No matter how many times I thought it, or tried to wrap my head around it, I couldn't. I had barely wanted to be Vice President. I would've been happy as the Senator from Michigan; I was never supposed to be President. Especially not this way. I looked across the coffin they were lowering into the ground and saw the other replacement. The man the androids had put in place to lead them after their former leader, the one who had been mostly responsible for the coffin that was most of the way into the ground now, was standing across the way. He looked like he could be their President. He looked appropriately sad, but composed and mature. I felt neither composed nor mature. He looked presidential, heck he was probably designed for it, I wasn't.

So I held that little boy's hand tighter as he shivered, even though it wasn't cold. John and I stood there hand in hand for what seemed like years after everyone but Reynolds’- I mean my-- secret service left.

"So you get to be the President now, right?" John asked, sitting under my desk and looking up at me. He was eating ice cream, and I probably should have stopped him, since it was dripping down onto his hand, and probably headed towards the nice carpet, but I didn't have the strength. I was sitting uncomfortably cross legged in my large leather chair, eating my own ice cream. I was supposed to have a meeting today, but John had started crying on the ride back home, and I didn't have the heart, so we'd gotten ice cream from the kitchen and now we were acting like we belonged in Reynolds' office. 

"Yep. I'm going to be President now," I said, looking around the huge office that I used to admire, but never covet, and feeling like I was invading Reynolds' space. I hadn't even sat in the chair before. I kept looking at the empty space where a picture of Reynolds and his wife used to be. I figured I should replace it, but I didn't have a wife, so who could I put there? I'd left the picture of John on my desk. He wasn't my son, but he mattered enough to keep a spot on my desk.

"Um... Uncle Bob? Spilled a lil' bit," John said. I looked down, to see him leaning down to lick a large glob of ice cream off of the carpet.

"Ah, ah, ah!" I called out, picking him up before he could.

"Well just get a cleaning robot to clean that up for you. Why don't we head down to the kitchen and see if they've got any cake to wash down our ice cream?" I asked, balancing him on one hip. He grinned a smile with a few teeth missing and wrapped his ice cream covered arms around my neck. And I mean arms, the boy was covered to the elbows in it.

So I've got a little under two thousand words to go. Maybe I'll move from the ever adorable Written? Kitten! that I wrote about in my last post, and for my last day use Write or Die, a somewhat more ominous writing site. Instead of inspiring you with a cute kitten picture every one hundred words, it instead will flash the screen red, make loud sounds or on the harshest settings, begin to delete your work if you stop writing. So if Written? Kitten! is the carrot, Write or Die is the stick.

Week Two Begins

Well, NaNo continues. It's one week in, and I've got 12,004 words down, 37,996 to go.
 If you look over to the right on the main page of this blog, you'll see my little word counter. Once it fills all the way up, my 50,000 words will be done, though not necessarily my entire novel (my first NaNo is now about 70,000 words...).
But again, I feel obligated to toss up another day's worth of writing. I skip around among scenes when I write, so this isn't chronologically the next bit. But basically, it's just Julius and Sarah (my two main characters) arguing while they prepare Sarah's interviews for her editor.
This is a bit more than 1,667 words, but I just put up my writing from the beginning of the scene I am working on until the point that I have written up to as of right now.
Just another reminder, it is a very rough draft. Even more rough than my last piece, because as the month progresses, I tend to get lazier and lazier about scheduling enough time to actually think about what I'm writing.

Chapter Five: Off to Annabelle's

Julius grabbed my arm and tried to drag me from bed. I groaned and waved him away.

"I'm getting up, I'm getting up," I said, burrowing my cold hands under my pillow and burying my face into the pillow.

"Come on, Sarah," he said, nudging me again.

"Why? Isn't our only interview today at two?"

"Yes, but we also have a meeting with Annabelle at noon today," he said, pulling the blankets off of me. I immediately retracted into a ball, trying to pull as much warmth as I could from the fitted sheet around my mattress.

"That's at noon," I whined, looking at the clock, which blinked 7:00AM a few times to me.

"Have you written up all of the stories?" Julius asked, pulling the pillow out from under my head. My head fell softly onto the mattress.

"No, but--"

"No, but you need to get out of bed and get to work," he said, nudging my side. I groaned and rolled onto my back.

"I will go get a bucket of ice for you, Sarah. I will," he threatened, crossing his arms, “And you know your bed was damp for a month after.”

I rolled out of bed into the pile of my blankets he'd made.

"Will you remake my bed?" I asked, pulling myself from the pile to put a sweatshirt and sweatpants on over my shorts and tshirt. I was still cold.

"Will you get to work?" he asked.

"Yes," I groaned, pulling my hair into a tight bun and grabbing a pen from my nightstand. I tucked it into the bun and went to the thermostat.

"Julius, have you been messing with this again?" I asked, rubbing my arms.

"No, the heater is broken remember? And you won't let me call a repair bot. Because you keep saying you're going to get to it. Even though it's been a year," he said, giving me a stern look.

"Alright, alright," I said, throwing my hands up. I'd only insisted because I'd been feeling particularly stubborn last winter. I didn't even know how to fix a heater. Or anything really.

I made my way over to the wall of papers and began to gather scraps and photos and tickets in a pile in my arms. I shoved one of the chairs into the corner, and hefted up the table before dropping it with a slam.

"Oh for the love of..." Julius started, dropping the pillow onto the newly made bed before coming into the room where I was trying to shift furniture. He grinned at my glare, but picked up the table easily and shifted it.

"You know you have a desk right?" he said, gesturing to the beautiful wooden desk in the corner.

"And you know something is wrong with your android brain? You're not supposed to be this sarcastic," I said, dropping the pile of papers onto the floor. They billowed out in a bloom of fluttering papers.

"Ugh. Something is wrong with my brain..." Julius muttered, making his way into the kitchen. He began to brew coffee. It was the one human food, well drink I guess that he liked. Loved actually. If he was human, he'd constantly be wired up, given how much coffee he drank. I think part of it was that my father drank too much coffee as well. And despite what people said about companion robots, Julius at least was basically raised by my parents. So he'd picked up the habit of drinking way too much coffee. And drinking it too strong and too black. So when he brought me my cup I poured in half the bowl of sugar and at least a cup of milk. He made a disgusted face, but I just went back to piling up the papers I'd dumped on the ground.

"So you haven't done anything to prepare for your deadline with Annabelle?" Julius asked, settling onto the couch and taking a sip of his coffee.

I looked up at him without lifting my head.

"Does it look like I did?"

"Humans," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Aw, come on. It's not just us. I'm sure there are procrastinating robots," I said, tapping my pencil on the floor at a rapid pace.

"You'd be surprised," he said.

"And will you stop that? I keep thinking you're trying to tap out Morse code," he said, rubbing his temples.

"What?" I asked, still rapidly tapping my pencil. He pointed at it and his eyes flicked to the left, so he definitely was trying to translate what I was tapping into Morse code.

"You're saying "AGHEDKJEOSAJGEFDDFRDIIBOE" Please stop," he said, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes .

I chuckled a little bit, but stopped. When I looked back up, I started backwards. He had a panel on his arm open, and was fiddling with some of the mechanics in his forearm.

"Stop, stop, stop. If you can tell me not to do something because you don't like it, so can I," I said, covering my eyes.

"You don't listen to me half of the time I tell you not to do something," he said, continuing to fidget with the wires.

"Ouch!" he cried out. I looked up, and shifted towards him.

"Are you okay?" I asked, reaching forward to tip his open arm towards me.

"No, it's fine. I just touched a live wire by accident," he said, putting the fingers of his other hand into his mouth. When he pulled his fingers out they were bright red.

“Let me get you some ice,” I said, using his knee to pull myself up.

I came back with ice cubes wrapped in a paper towel, and he pressed it onto his fingers.

"Close my arm for me?" Julius said, the panel on his arm still exposing the wires and mechanical bits beneath. I tried not to look into it as I clicked the panel closed. The edge of the panel blended in seamlessly.

"Why does that freak you out so much," he asked, still pressing the ice into his fingers. A few droplets from the melting ice darkened the rug.

"Because you look like a human and it's weird when I'm reminded that you're not," I said, and shifted back to sit crosslegged in the pile of papers.

"Wow, Sarah. You have my computer chip for my emotions tattooed on your freaking arm and you can still forget that I'm an android?" Julius asked sarcastically before climbing down from the couch to sit with his back against the cushions. He turned a stack of papers towards himself and began to sort through them. I paused for a moment to look at the complicated square of green and red and blue squares and lines that was printed on the inside of my wrist, then looked up. Julius was trying to extract a brown flower from between two sheets of paper.

"Careful with that!"

"It's a dead flower," Julius said, holding the crumpled blossom delicately in his hand.

"Be careful, alright."

Two hours later, my stomach was growling for the breakfast I didn’t have and we'd run out of coffee.

"I'm gonna run down to the diner. Want anything?" I asked, standing up to stretch out my back and legs.

"I'd like some more coffee," Julius said, lifting up his empty cup, then dropping it down onto the rug.

"Alright, I'll be back in a minute," I said, changing from my pajama pants into some old jeans. I decided not to tell Julius that I wasn't sure whether they were clean or not.

I grabbed my hat from the hook by the door, where Julius must've put it after I went to sleep. The elevator hummed as I waited in it, and examined my reflection in the mirror.

The city was strangely empty as I made my way to the diner, walking parallel to the mall. I pulled my hands up into my sleeves to protect them from the cold wind. But even the wind couldn't hide the fact that the city was silent. It seemed like the robot quarter it was so silent.

A tiny bell dinged as I opened the door to the diner. Immediately a wave of warm air that smelled of cinnamon and hot chocolate buffeted the wind outside and drove it away as I closed the door behind me.

"Kara!" I called as I approached the empty counter. A woman bustled out, her apron strings flapping.

"Kara, turn around, your apron is undone," I said, twirling one finger.

"Oh dear. You know, they told me when I was put into an android body I'd remember things better. But this mind is just as scatterbrained as my old one," she said as I tied up the back of her apron.

"I'm sure you'll be fine," I said, patting her on the back once I'd tied up the strings.

"And at least when I was human I still had you to remind me to do everything," Kara said. She started preparing my order, because she already knew what I'd want. And it's possible Julius had linked with her to tell her.

"Are you sure you don't want to come back to work here?" Kara said, brew up two cups of coffee. One so strong and thick I'm not even sure how she managed poured it from the pot, and one with a little swirl of caramel in it.

"And be the only human on the staff?"  I asked, picking at the unopened menu sitting in front of me.

"Oh, you know it wouldn't be like that, hon. We're the same people, even if we've got a few more wires and circuits now," she said, tucking some strands of her gray hair behind her ear.

"I know. But I've got my book to work on anyways," I said, taking the cups of coffee she handed me.

"Oh, I know, I know dear. How is that going by the way?"

"Pretty well, I'm up to about fifty stories, and I'm submitting three more today," I said, as she handed me a paper bag with two cinnamon  rolls in it. One for home, and one for the restaurant where Julius couldn't tell me not to eat it. I pulled it out, and she gave me a napkin to put it on. I'd convinced her to stop wasting plates on me after a month or so.

"Good for you. Say hello to Annabelle for me," she said. The wind picked up and rattled the blinds against the windows.

"Wild out there, isn't it?" she said, peering over the counter, "Looks like a storm might be blowing in."

"I heard it's coming later this week," I said, pulling my hat down over my ears with the hand that wasn't covered in icing from my cinnamon roll.

"It's quiet out there today. Almost sounds like the robot quarter. It's a bit creepy," I said through a muffled mouth full of chewy cinnamon roll, "Must be because of the storm."

"Must be," Kara said, handing me a wet wipe. I nodded thanks and wiped the icing off my fingers.

            "See you later Kara. This coffee is the strongest you can make? 'Cuz you know he won't drink it if it's not," I said, grabbing the coffee cups and laughing a bit.

"Of course it is. Tell Julius that if he doesn't trust me to make him a damn good cup of coffee, he can come here and show me a better one," Kara said, placing her hands on her wide hips.

"I will," I said, with a laugh, drawing my hood up over my hat and slipping out into the street.

So, there you go. I'm off to Written? Kitten, which I do believe is my new favorite writing site (for every 100 words you write, it shows you a picture of a cute little kitten).

Wish me luck, I'm getting some more kitten pictures!

First Day of NaNoWriMo

The first day of NaNo is always the most fun. As you're writing that first section you realize the things that you are going to love about writing your novel, who is going to become your favorite character and you realize how short 1,667 words per day is. You don't realize what you're going to hate about writing your novel, or who your least favorite character to write is going to be, or how long 1,667 words per day can be when you're busy until about the second week.
But I'll try not to get ahead of myself. Just to show you how much 1,667 words is, and to give a little understanding of what my blog is going to be dedicated to for the next month, I'm going to post the first 1,667 (or so) words. Try to remember that this is an extremely rough draft.

***

            The first thing I saw when I woke up was my alarm clock lying in a decidedly dead position in the corner of my room. Before I could even shiver at the cold, I was up and out of bed.

“Julius,” I groaned, pulling off my warm pajama pants and wincing as the cold air pulled goose bumps from my skin before I could pull on my jeans.

“Julius, you good for nothing robot, get up,” I said, flinging one of my shoes across the apartment at him. It bounced down on his bed, and I swore in the slurred speech of the recently awoken when I realized I needed it.

            When I walked over, Julius was sitting stock straight in his bed. I leaned forward and saw his eyes flicking around rapidly, so I left him to scan his memory. If I didn’t we wouldn’t know where to go, since of course I didn’t keep track of any addresses.

            I grabbed my shoes from his bed and rifled through his dresser until I found clothing to toss at him. He didn’t react as they fell into his lap. Finally, with three short twitches of his right hand, he looked up at me with clear blue eyes and a bit of annoyance.

            “Why do you have to wrinkle every single piece of clothing that you touch,” Julius complained, trying to flatten out the shirt I’d thrown to him as he buttoned it up.

            “Because unlike you, I understand that we’re in a bit of a rush,” I said, pulling out the ingredients to make a quick breakfast. Julius did up his last button as he approached me, and he pushed me aside. He quickly began to make some French toast, faster than I could’ve made regular toast.

            “How late are we this time?”

            “Only about half an hour,” I said, not looking up at him as I tied my shoes.

            “Wonderful. And whose fault is that?” he asked. I made my way back up to my room, and kicked my alarm clock aside to root through the pile of papers beneath it.

            "Not mine," I complained, "I set an alarm! And you're a companion robot, aren't you supposed to have an alarm?"

I plucked out an almost empty notebook. I ripped the used pages out and pinned them over a few others on my bedroom wall.

"You know my alarm doesn't work anymore. Would you rather I get a memory wipe so that you can wake up on time?" he asked, turning to give me an admonishing look, though it was somewhat tempered when he gestured angrily with his spatula.

"Oh really, Sarah? Don't fill up another wall," he said, when he saw I'd pinned the papers to a new wall. He looked woefully at the crowded, messy wall of papers I'd made on one full end of the apartment.

"Maybe they'll cover up the wall you hate so much," I said, gesturing to our white and black striped wall. The stripes were wavering and imperfect and the white paint was beginning to show from under the black paint.

"Won't you just let me organize your papers. Or at least repaint that atrocious wall," he begged, placing out a piece of French toast for me. I bit into the thick bread and he popped in a gray supplement pill before we left. Julius wouldn't stop fidgeting with his collared shirt, complaining that I'd wrinkled it. By the time we were on the elevator, I'd convinced him it was fine. But then he'd started to worry about the single curl that always managed to pop up in the front of his blond hair. It curled down onto his forehead every day, without fail, despite his arguments that he "wasn't designed with it."

By the time we were out the front door, our neighbor was bringing in her laundry and barking in Spanish at her husband, who was leaning out of one of the windows above us. He waved to us as Julius and I crossed the empty street.

"Do we have to cross the mall?" I asked.

"We can if you want. It'd take us in the right direction."

"Of course I want to," I said, tugging his jacket towards the row of bare trees surrounding the mall.

"You know you're like a small child right? You're twenty two and you act like a small child half of the time," he said, rolling his eyes.

"And you act like an old man, so together we even out," I said, as we passed the towering Washington Monument and frozen dew crunched under my sneakers. I shivered just barely.

"I told you to bring a heavier jacket," Julius said, looking idly at his watch.

"I'm fine," I replied, rubbing feeling back into my arms, "How late are we going to be?"

"About half an hour. You were exaggerating a bit this morning," Julius said, shrugging off his jacket and handing it to me.

"Julius, you don't have to--"

"You know I don't need it. I can't get cold. And if you freeze we'll never get there on time," Julius said, pushing the jacket back into my hands.

            We passed through the mall and came to the end of the containment unit. A huge plastic wall rose before me, and I could see my own wavering reflecting in the thick plastic next to Julius'. A dull hum came from the air purifiers a hundred feet away as they pumped clean air into the unit. I opened the steel locker in front of me to reveal racks of oxygen masks. I pulled off my wool hat and jammed it onto Julius' head. He shook his head and the bright red pompom on top of the hat bounced. He pulled the hat off, and jammed it into his pocket. I didn't tell him that it'd ruffled up his hair.

I grabbed an oxygen mask. Smirking at his messy hair, I pulled on my mask, trying to find a way to place the strap so that it wouldn't leave angry red marks on my cheeks but knowing no matter what I did it would.

"Get the back?"

Julius stepped forward and tightened the strap. He always pulled it tighter than I wanted. Even though I knew if he didn't pull it tight enough, I'd suffocate as soon as I stepped across the border into the robot quarter.

"Why is it called the robot quarter, anyways," I asked, my voice muffled by the oxygen mask that Julius was carefully adjusting. He didn't respond.

"I mean it's not a quarter of D.C. It's more like three quarters. Or five sixths. When you think about it, most of the city, heck, most of the world is part of the robot 'quarter'," I mused.

"Do you really want me to check that, or is this just that weird habit humans have of speaking through their entire thought process," Julius asked. I wasn't sure whether he was being sarcastic or not.

"No, you don't have to," I responded. I assumed that he was being serious. He wasn't sarcastic often, and when he was, he wasn't exactly subtle.

"Come on, Sarah. We've got to get to the entry point," Julius said, tugging on the strap of my mask to lead me there. My laugh seemed hollow as it was stopped by the plastic around my face.

Julius came to the terminal in front of the entry point  before I did, and punched in the code that verified that any humans coming over were wearing the appropriate masks. He was programmed so that he couldn't enter the code unless the humans were masked. But I'd seen him put in the code enough that I could probably cross by myself if I wanted to, mask or no mask. But no one in their right mind would cross out of the containment unit into the oxygen depleted and pathogen ridden outside without a mask. Though, from what I'd heard, being among the last hundred humans in existence can put some people out of their right minds.

"Are you thinking about something depressing?" Julius asked, raising his voice over the hiss of the entry point opening.

"What?" I sputtered, "You know I hate it when you do that. It's like you're reading my mind."

"I'm a companion android. It's not my fault I have to analyze it every time a muscle in your face moves," he said. He slipped away from me into the entry point before continuing.

"Then again, it's not like I really need to. Every thought you have is clearly spelled out on your face before you even have it."

I glared at him as the entry point blasted him with air and opened the door into the other side. I stepped into the entry point once the door to the robot quarter slid shut.

Cold air that tasted vaguely like the doctor’s office rushed over me, whipping my hair and jacket. It died down and I hurried to fix my now wild hair. But judging by the look that Julius gave me once I stepped out into the robot quarter, I’d failed. I managed to get it back where I wanted it, but his look remained.

“Alright, what is it?”

“Do you need to part your hair to the side? It’s asymmetrical,” he said, his fingers twitching a bit, like they did when I told him he couldn’t clean up my room.

I laughed just a bit. This was the perfect revenge for when earlier in the week, he’d tossed my transcript of my interview with one of the teachers in the human reserve, just because I’d spilled a bit of pasta sauce on the corner.

I laughed quietly though, then waited for Julius to catch up with me after he’d entered another code into the terminal.

I didn’t like to spend time in the robot city alone. Or at all, really. Julius loved this city the way I love the human city. For him it was perfect. Pristine, symmetrical, geometrical, and perfectly organized robots are the only ones making their way silently down the street. We must’ve passed a hundred androids in the first few blocks. 

A few, the older robots, greeted me. But I’d noticed recently that most robots were no longer programmed to greet humans. The deference that they used to show was pointless when only about one hundred humans remained. 

***

So, while 1,667 isn't an impossible word count to reach, it's not exactly a cake-walk either. Well, I better get back to writing. 

NaNoWriMo

This year, I intend to participate in NaNoWriMo again.

I don't know how many people know what NaNoWriMo is, so I'll start with the basics. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a brand new, 50,000 word piece of fiction writing solely in the month of November. The word goal is set at 50,000 because to be considered a novel, a piece of writing must be at least 50,000 words (this is about the length of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or The Great Gatsby). You can writing any fiction genre, your novel just has to be at 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th.
In NaNoWriMo, there are generally considered two types of WriMos (participants in NaNoWriMo), planners and pantsers. Planners spend the month (or more) before November planning out the plot, subplots,  settings, characters, outlining, setting out time, and generally prepping everything. Pantsers, on the other hand, write by the seat of their pants, hence the name. They don't plan, and let the plot and characters evolve as the month progresses.
I'm a planner to the extreme. I've already filled out half a notebook with outlining, character plans and a million other things that probably won't even end up in my draft. But I figure with all the school work I'm going to be doing, I don't have time to be figuring out the plot as I write.

I'm posting all of this for two reasons. First, writing is one of my biggest passions, and so is Nano. The rush that comes with immersing yourself that entirely into writing for a month is fantastic. The second is related to the fact that I'm a planner. To make sure that I'm spending all possible time in November writing, I intend to post sections of my NaNo novel on this blog as I write it.

Here's the website if you're curious (or if you're feeling inspired to join me?). I almost forgot, if you decide to try Nano, talk to me and we can be "Writing Buddies" on the site.