NaNoWriMo is Coming!

Three more days, and I've been preparing.

In the NaNoWriMo forums there are tons of different helpful tricks and exercises to help you reach the coveted 50,000 goal.

In one of the exercises, there is a topic of the day that you can write about for five minutes. It's fun, easy to do, and it's a good test to see how many words you can write in five minutes. I'm usually either surprised or disappointed with what I get. Here are a couple.

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Re: October 6th Exercise- Hair

Ugh. Hair.

Laura's Mom scoured the floor for stray strands. Laura's hair was so damn long, even two strands looked sufficient enough to give a mouse a decent bouffant.

This hair gets all over. It ties up the vaccuum, it clogs up the drain. She should just cut her hair.

"Laura!" Mom yelled across the house, "your hair is all over!" Laura calmly walked in, brushing her hair in a taunting fashion.

"I know Mom. Sorry." Laura didn't mind too much. It's not like there was anything she could do about it, short of cutting it, and there was no way Laura was going to cut her long, straight, shiny, brown-black hair for anyone, especially her mother. Well, there was one way, but that was for charity, and she needed a trim anyway. Mom was always nagging her about everything. If it wasn't her hair, it was her face, if not her face, then her clothes. What's wrong with the way I keep myself? I like myself just fine. Laura walked to where her mother was, pulled the excess mat of hair off of her hair brush and placed the soft, silky pile of protein to her mother.

"Would you throw this away for me?"

206
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Re: October 24th Exercise- Wings

God, I'm stuck here she thought to herself as she stared lazily out the plate glass door of her mom's single storey suburban ranch style house. Jamie twirled her fluffy tipped pencil around her thumb. It's so damn boring. Why did we have to leave Dad and come to this stupid house in this stupid neighborhood with this stupid jackass. She glanced out the door again to see Jack, who momentarily stopped raking leaves to pull some leaves from between the teeth of the rake.

I could just leave here. I could leave here and her and him and just take off. I could take the car, go to the bank, get out all of my money, drive to the train station, buy a ticket to Somewhere USA and just leave. Jamie sighed again. Or I could just stay here like I always do and twirl this damn pencil around my thumb. Stupid stupid. She threw her pencil against the wall. There it lay, lead unbroken, fluffy tuft swaying slightly in the draft from the plate glass door. Jamie walked over, picked it up and started drawing on the plate glass door. Her mother walked in as she was giving Jack a mustache and some horns.

206. Better than I expected. What I wrote seems trite to me though.
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There's another one where you are given a first sentence, and you just go on from there. There's not time limit to that one. Here's one of mine.

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Re: Oct 24 Sentence Prompt

He reached the top of the snowy cliff and peered down at it, shivering a little upon seeing the bare rocks. Funny James thought to himself. Those rocks look a lot pointier than yesterday. He continued past the precarious precipice to the safer ledge beyond.

Looking out onto the Grand Tetons, James Markison breathed in all he could of the majestic wonder of the creation he stood upon. Brisk, light winds fanned burnt cheeks. The sun shone over the peak of an adjacent mountain, covering him in shadow while the valley below sparkled, bathed in morning light. If Alice were here, she'd complain about the cold.
5 mintues.
108 words.
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Not the best, of course, but at least it gets me thinking. Oh, and I've decided not to publish the novel in a blog. I don't want to go through all the trouble of formatting and things, but I will post excerpts from it here from time to time. Also, they say it's hard to get a book published if it's already available for free on the internet. Not that I'm going to actively try and get the novel published, of course.... I'm still not sure what it'll be about exactly, but I've got some ideas. I don't have a definite outline planned either. I'm gonna fly by the seat of my pants. Wish me luck!