Busy day.

( Chapter 1 )

I'm working with a similar idea to last year's, except hopefully a bit less depressing! I'm not sure I like it, but it's chugging along. I've started Chapter Two and run into the slight problem of...not having a plot. Yeah. Ha. Oh well! Onward!

Okay, so I only made a pitiful 11300 last year. I can do better this year!

( Read more... )

Getting behind but kind of liking my novel more than I had anticipated!
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Yeah, progress is slow!!!

I'm posting this by sections in the draft, not by day. Here's the 2nd section...awful, of course.( Read more... )

            Laura Lynn Brennan trudged to her apartment after class.  She never managed a walk; it was trudge, trudge, trudge, day after endless day.  Her purse swung off her shoulder in a fluid motion, her key in her hand, the door opened—she gave it the usual little boost with her right shoulder—and she was home.

        “Home is where the heart is,” she muttered, tossing her keys onto the front entrance table.  The truth was, her heart hadn’t really been anywhere that she could remember.  Not the drafty house in Montana, not the cramped subdivision in Arkansas.  Perhaps for a brief period of time the spacious old home in Wisconsin, but that was a lifetime ago.

        “Mrow?”

        Laura sighed and pushed away her morose thoughts. “Yes, Queenie, I am going to feed you.  It’s been a long day, okay?”

        Queenie’s satisfied rumbling indicated little concern over her owner’s troubles, and Laura uttered another sigh.  She shrugged out of her jacket, hung it on a hook behind the door.  Her shoes joined the haphazard pile—perhaps she hadn’t needed that most recent pair, but shoes were a weakness of hers—and she slipped into flip-flops before trudging to the kitchen.  In the cabinet beneath the second counter she found the cat food. Running low, she noted, grabbing a PostIt to stick to the door.  Queenie was about the only thing that Laura cared about anymore, and it would break her heart to fail her cat.

        After she set out Queenie’s food, the Siamese cat proceeded to ignore her owner as she ate.  Frowning, Laura grabbed an apple for her own supper and went to plop onto the couch.  Its springs creaked beneath her, and she had another flash of utter anger and despair.  Perhaps she ought to journal this out—she’d read online that depression sufferers were greatly assisted by journaling.  Yet the effort of getting up seemed nearly too much.  Her journal was locked in the bedstand drawer; she couldn’t imagine her embarrassment if anyone ever read her melodramatic mental meanderings.

        She watched several moments tick by on the clock, her green eyes glazing over in a tepid sort of lifelessness that she had grown all too used to as of late.  Finally she mustered up enough energy to get up and walk to the bedroom, to spin out the combination, and to retrieve her journal.  She sprawled across her bed on her stomach, staring at the blank page. With a heavy sigh, she began to write.

 

        Well, today stunk. Still stinks. Class was long and horrible. I swear the professors are just thinking up new ways to confuse us.  Two exams next week that I feel awfully unprepared for, and at this rate I can’t imagine being in grad school next year.  I’m likely to explode before I ever get there.

        She paused, clicking the pen against her teeth. Sometimes she felt guilty about what she wrote, but this was for her own benefit, right?  Gritting her teeth, she continued.

       

        Not that exploding would be so bad.  It would be kind of nice, actually. To just be done with this place. This world. This boring, repetitive, routine, nasty life.  That’s really the problem.  I look forward into my future and I can’t stand it.  Just more of the same—and none of it matters!

 

        Her pen had punctured the page so fiercely she had underscored her last thought.  She looked at it for a second before chuckling.  “Queenie!” she called out to the kitchen.  “Your Laura is going nuts!”

        Queenie wandered in, her head cocked to one side.  Her glowing eyes rested on Laura for a moment and then she turned and walked back out.  Laura stared at where her cat had been.  Queenie had never ignored her so thoroughly before, she thought, and tears started to well up in her eyes.

        “This is ridiculous,” she said out loud, trying to calm herself.  She knew once she got started, the sobs would come loud and long, unstoppable until she fell asleep.  The momentum had already started, and soon her face was buried in her pillow, her long orange hair spilling out about her.

        “I give up!”  Crying so hard she could barely breathe, Laura rummaged in the unlocked drawer.  She came up with one, then two, and finally five bottles of pills.  Every time she went to the store she picked up a new bottle, although she never used any of the old ones.  She always told herself it was to be prepared, but to be prepared for what?

 

        I am prepared for this.  It will be new, at least. Different. The meaningless of this life is behind me.

 

        She wrote one last sentence in her journal, her tears subsiding now, purpose filling her in the place of the unending sadness.  Only a moment now—a tall glass of water from the sink—empty all the bottles—goodness that was a lot of pills…

        One by one she popped them down at first, sipping after each. Then two at a time, and then three, and finally she was just eating them in handfuls, the water forgotten.  Half a dozen times she thought she couldn’t do it, but somewhere inside her she was resolved to be done with the dreariness and utter worthless of her life.

        The room faded to gray, and then to black.

Over the next 30 days, a very horrible novel will be appearing on this journal. Please feel free to laugh out loud. The point is the National Novel Writing Month challenge --> 50,000 words in a month!!! YEAH!

Here goes!