My Little Yellow Friend

Light a lot of writers (and maybe all of them), I hate editing.  I do it, because copy-editing is expensive (and rightly so), but I would much rather sunbathe naked on a bed of hot coals.

For those who aren't writers themselves, editing a novel is like a long string of four-hour meetings with yourself during with your boss drones on and on, but keeps a watchful eye so that no one can fall asleep.  You play with your Blackberry under the table or start folding your meeting agendas into paper footballs to pass the time, but every time you miss a bullet point, another meeting gets scheduled to review the same section of the budget.

Imagine doing this every day for a month.  Now ask me why I never complain about the rates for copy-editing, which by my estimate are well shy of where their truth worth should by all rights be valued.

For one, it should be measured in gold and precious gems, not humble dollars.

But, editing is a necessary part of getting any novel from your own eyes to the viewing public.  Well, 'necessary' is perhaps not the word.  After all, I understand Dan Brown has been very successful--

I apologize, that was low.  Let us refocus:

Copy-editing aside, plot editing, especially in the full-speed-ahead environment of NaNoWriMo, becomes a more tangled and messy process.  And it's the precursor to copy-editing.  It involves endless hunt-and-peck each time you change something late in the story to ensure that all the points, clues and pieces leading up to that seemingly innocuous change still make sense.

Much like the proverbial butterfly, a little wingbeat sends ripples out for miles in every direction.  Your job is to get the unsuspecting islanders out of the way before the hurricane roars through.

That's why, this year, I plan on getting ahead of the collapse and leaving myself a veritable breadcrump trail with the confidence that I will be walking these lines again when I change something major halfway between here and Thanksgiving.

Normally, in editing, I read the story through once as a reader and simply highlight or comment on the different key elements.  Character descriptions.  Clues to the overall plot.  Turning points.  Unsung side characters who may house hidden potential.  I try to circle all the little holes I willfully leave myself in case I have to come back through and fill them with something later.

This year, I'm going to so as I go.  While writing the story, I will annotate the different character description points, key turning points, clues and the like as I write them, before the story itself is even vaguely finished.  With luck, it will make it easier to traipse back through the work later and find the pieces that the wings of my later butterflies will have cast astray.

I'm using MS Word this year, as I often do, though OpenOffice Writer has the same potential:  virtual highlights.  In this case, I'll likely use comments instead, as they make for an easy margin with markers at each key point, much like those little thing Post-it strips in a virtual sense.

My hope, however premature, is that these little notes won't just help with the editing process to come.  My hope is that they will help with the development of the story.  They will be mile markers on the road map of the plot as it translates from outline to manuscript, making it easy to see if any have fallen astray, and to get a feel for the pacing on the work as a whole, like the bars between measures in a musical score.

All that remains now is to see whether I have time enough to pay any attention to them as I fly past in a hurried rush to finish the scene.

I don't expect copy-editing to get any easier.  Reverse line-editing (reading sentences start to finish, but reading them in the reverse order relative to each other) remains the best, if still agonizingly tedious way to do that.

If I can at least cut the time it takes to finish the plot and story edits, however, I can get the copy-editing done sooner, and may, in the end, complete and entirely different feat from the 30-day draft.

The 90-day completed manuscript.

"Bellringers" - Aisha's Private Symphony

The rum bottle rattled as it settled to a stop on the corner of the baby grand, a single drop of the sweet, dark liquor still tracing the curve of the glass and lingering on the label.  Popping the cover up and brushing a hand across the keys, Aisha poured herself onto the bench as the scratch of the record player behind her heralded the coming of the steady beat of a drummer recorded decades ago in a room without much more light than she had now.  The starless night outside lay heavy on a bed of twinkling orange streetlights; a stirring reminder that her world had been turned upside-down.

She set to playing before her mind dared intervene.  The rum had bought her time against the coming crash, if only by getting her out ahead of it in the vain hope of outrunning the tidal wave of her despair.  Lydia was miles over Denver by now and soaring west, never looking back, leaving Aisha alone in the biggest room in this small town with the richest nothing she had ever known.  The thick, black night outside only strengthened her fear that the sun had no intention of rising tomorrow, no matter what promises it had made today.

The slow twang of the guitar tickled her ears as the piece slipped out of the intro into the first verse.  Sumner had the same quick, measured pluck; never too rough when he played.  He was always careful with the strings, not wanting to hurt the instrument, nor offend it by playing it too delicately and robbing it of the chance to play with bold abandon.

As the static on the record mingled with the buzz of the strings, she forced down the illness in her stomach at the thought of never hearing him play again.  His were the last kind words she had heard with any sense of sincerity, and she had thrown them back in his face.

The weathered keys of the baby grand sent wave after wave of memory coursing up through her fingertips and spiraling down her arms as the chorus ratcheted up the pace.  The smooth ivory was dotted by rough patches where the enamel had started to wear through, tickling her skin as she slipped into the quickened pace of the second verse.

Her body began to sway, at first to the motion of her hands crossing one over the other to manage the complex chorus and soon entirely of its own accord, swimming in an ocean of feeling that had been welling up inside of her for months until tonight, when it came crashing through the levees of her more metered appearance and washed away any hope of going back on the things she had said.

Her right hand danced along the raised keys, her fingers sliding nearly the full length of the key with each touch, savoring the cool sensation as her body began to heat up, in part from the playing and then again from the half-empty bottle of rum resting on one corner of the piano with Jessica's note still tied on a silver cord around the neck.  "Congratulations!" it said, in a script more careful and refined than the woman who had written it, "You've made it!"

Alone with her liquor and the wild echoes of the notes rebounding off of every corner of the room, bombarding her from every angle with the shapes of the unspoken words she had never had the guts to sing aloud, Aisha felt truly unmade.

As the chorus wound down to the bridge, her feverish fingers began to hammer the keys with all the precision of a rifleman aiming for the kill.  The low notes resonated through the dark wood of the piano frame and sent small ricochets rocketing up her flank until her head went weak from the swirling cocktail of booze, reverb and the sheer exertion of playing with such a reckless will.

Each note was a bell struck in prayer that it might drive away the demons lurking in the shadows of her more sober mind.  The city lights spreading out in all directions below the wide windowed wall of the studio lined the stage of her private performance and granted the faceless thousands living below a clear view of a woman desperately pounding on the door of her own prison with every note.

As the climb to the final chorus began, Aisha leaned in close to the keys, her long hair rippling forward and shading her face.  As the music began to rise toward its peak, so, too, did she, her neck straightening before her back, leaving her staring with eyes closed into the guts of the piano as the hammers danced with unforgiving force across its strings.

Her feet stomped against the pedals, the toes of her new boots grinding against the wooden slats that led deeper into the guarded underbelly of the beast her hands were unleashing above.  Awash in a thousand thoughts all distant and surreal, Aisha leaned back and welcomed the last breathless rush of the song's final notes, trailing off into the light epilogue at its close.

And then, with the last, deep chord still grumbling in the distance, Aisha rolled her foot off the pedal and closed the door on the song at last, still feeling the vibrations in her fingers tingling all the way up her arms.  Her body suddenly felt heavy as the dizziness in her head turned to a sharp pounding at her temples only scantly muted by the richness of the drink.

The record behind her started to skip, its rhythmic stutter reminding her to keep breathing as she stared at the bottle on the corner of the piano with all the hatred and longing of a lover wronged.  It was over.  There were no more notes to play.  All she could do now was bundle up her heart and use the broken pieces to write something new.

With a last willful urge, she reached for the bottle to drain what remained, only to spot a second, slender hand already gripping the neck.  She watched as the bottle lifted into the air and came to rest on a pair of familiar lips as Kennedy swallowed down the last of her rum, her eyes never leaving Aisha's face.  "You're so predictable," the woman chided, setting the bottle back on the corner of the piano without taking her fingers off the neck.  "Still using our old alarm code after all these years?  I'm almost touched..."

The piano bench landed with a loud clap against the floor as Aisha leapt to her feet, backing away from the woman with an accusing finger already pointed roughly in her direction.  "Dammit, Kennedy!" she shouted, the sudden volume startling her, although Kennedy remained unfazed.  "You can't just come waltzing in whenever you like!"

"No?" Kennedy lilted, shifting to rest her hip against the side of the baby grand.  She made no secret of drinking in the sight of Aisha so near the brink, eyes still red with tears, hair a wild, wavy mass of chaos.  "Seems like I waltzed in just in time."

"Letters to Marisa" - The Whole of My Confession

My Dearest Marisa,

Deepest winter knows no chill like the absence of your company, and history no fool like a man who dies with precious words unspoken.  I, as you know, would never suffer being remembered a fool, and so I have taken to ink to convey what soft, sweet things I have kept hidden like a knife in my cloak all these years, fearful of ever venturing afar without them close to my heart.

To my great disappointment, you already know that I have never been a man of clean morals.  My efforts to keep such from you were successful on their own merit, were it not for the near-limitless resources and single-minded will of your husband-to-be.  My compliments to John, really.  When it comes to doing so little with so much, few men can be as boastful as he.

But I digress.  I do not write these things to you so that you may know the true nature of your fiance's secret endeavors.  Rather, that is not their primary aim.  I write these things to you so that you may never doubt again the words I spoke to you that night in the garden.  I will forever love you, and death itself cannot mar that simple and powerful truth.  If I ever doubted those words myself, I feel assured I have my answer now.

I write these letters to you most of all, Marisa, because I am sure that I am dead.

It is with great regret that I realize you will no doubt have heard the news before these letters reach your hands.  I wish more than anything that I could have delivered the news myself, though of course that is impossible.

A close second was to have these letters delivered by softer and cleaner hands than mine, which is of course why I selected your servant, Renardo.  Would that his English were better, I might have asked him to read them.  My words ferried by so dulcet a tenor as his might have somehow lessened the inevitable impact to your comfort, not to credit myself too greatly with my own importance.

It was unavoidable, I'm afraid, to have them so delayed.  Your fiance's agents are especially talented in keeping the truth from you, especially where it regards my private endeavors.  They would have you think me the villain and John the perennial hero, a fabrication the latter has no doubt delighted in, not knowing the face I have shown you when his arrogance leads his attentions elsewhere.

But enough.  I cannot do you the disservice of wasting so long in my own ingratiation while you no doubt stare with furrowed brow at these sheets of oil-stained parchment and the carefully inked words of my confessions.  I promised you truth, and so you shall have it:  every moment of it unaltered, much as it pains me to lay bare the efforts I have made in darkness; shameful, if necessary, acts I had hoped in vain to hide you from.

All men, I suppose, know the feeling of an inescapable, hopeless desire.  All men suffer under the weight of their own ambitions and the dreams that drive us ever onward into madness.  I have never counted myself among the ranks of ordinary men, as you well know.  It was that very hubris that you so deftly shattered at our every meeting.  I trust that those same ever-fetching qualities, your effortless cleverness and undeniable curiosity, will now lead you to continue in spite of all misgivings.

And I am certain you will have them.

Despite the temptation to begin with your fiance's blood-filled past, I feel the part of being the better man, even in death, is to begin by placing my own life in the stocks, as it were.  In truth, I feel the part of being the better man would be not to let the authorities, a mere auxiliary partner to our common duel, bring a heavy-handed and no doubt very public end to my adversary's life, but again, I digress.

I will not excuse myself with my upbringing, unpleasant though it was.  You asked once of my mother, and to my credit I did not lie, but neither did I tell you the whole of the truth.  My mother aided evil men in the doing of evil things, that much you know.  That I did not correct you when you kindly assumed it was out of some overbearing financial pressure and the motherly desire to provide for her ailing son is only because I very much preferred your fiction to my own, unkind memories.

My mother took to the work with an acumen and an eagerness I rarely encountered in my own dealings years later.  Would that there were more like her, I might have won out against our dear John, or at least been bested by a more worthy opponent.  I firmly believe her willingness to act as the pleasant, legal face for the smugglers of Alverston Port was out of a personal curiosity at how long she could keep up the facade.  Her little game with the port authority might have ended in her favor, had one of the local smugglers not gotten greedy.  Greed, as your soon-to-be husband well knows, only ever ends with someone dead.

My father is of no consequence; a sailor with ungentlemanly notions of a proper romance spurned on by drink and the opportunity of an empty alley behind my mother's tavern.  Let us discuss him no further.

In my youth, I knew a brief, idyllic existence as the apple of my mother's eye.  When her affections were lost to the long string of lovers that swarmed her later years, I was beloved instead by the seldom sober patrons of the Eve's End.  I relished the attention, as most children do.  I suppose that early fame left its own impression on my future self, an influence you perhaps suffered under most of all.

Truthfully, I never wanted for their interest even a fraction so much as I did yours, nor had to fight for it so passionately.  Drunken sailors are an easy mark for a child with deft hands and a curious mind. Neither served me well when it came to garnering your affections.  There, to my great surprise, it was the clumsiest of confessions that met with the most success.  I remain uncertain even now whether that describes a weakness on your part, or on mine.

To return to the point, in the months and years after my mother's murder, I quickly discovered just how much of my mother's unintentional tutelage had seeped into my mind and made itself my own.  My education, however, was incomplete.  Thankfully, the streets of Alverton proved an able and eager tutor; one with a ready hand always on the ruler, as it were.

I will spare you the details of my ill-spent youth; I assure you, it is not worth retelling.  Every troupers' play features the delinquent urchin, the fool of a thief spared by the misplaced kindness of older, more gullible men.  What the performers seldom display are the violent beatings by up-and-coming constables venting their juvenile rage on a malnourished youth of the streets caught thieving a noble's son worthy of neither his title nor his bulging purse.  Perhaps because so many of their fathers would be in the audience, enjoying the show.

No, the story I wish to tell you begins long after my teenage years, during which my cleverness so often saw me into and out of troublesome situations of a life-threatening nature; a far cry from my later years, to be sure.  It begins instead the day that we met, so unassumingly one fine August afternoon under a sudden and unseasonable storm that chased all others from the streets of Ottsburg proper, leaving you and I alone to brave the winds and rain; a day when we both went in search of a way back from the brink our respective lives had drawn us to and instead found each other so appropriately on the apex of the precarious bridge over Fulton Creek.

It was on that day that, for the first and best time, I fell in love.  Had I known then that I had only just signed my death warrant, I would not for a moment have thought better of walking up and introducing myself.  On the contrary, I think I might have been all the bolder.  I would apologize for keeping the coward's way for so many years at your side, never telling you in so many words how I felt, but I know too well the ends that await those men who chase their hopeless desires down dark streets in the rain.  It was a life I could not suffer myself to bring to you until now, when I have at last, in my dying, made it safe.

This is the truth I have kept from you out of love, with a dedication heretofore unknown to me.  This is the truth of your fiance, my friend and adversary, and of the world that I suspect you always knew was there, waiting in the shadows around my every word.  I will draw back the curtain on the veil of lies John and I have told you all these years, and let you judge us both in full light of the sun.

I only hope, in the end, that whatever part of your heart remains unbroken in the reading of these letters may yet have some room for a kinder memory of me than I by all rights deserve.  But then, as I have said:  I know too well the hopeless desires that afflict all men.

Number Munching

For whatever reason, in the last weeks leading up to November, nothing comforts me more than math.

More accurately, breaking down word counts and my per diem diet of writing helps me to bring the great and nebulous concept of "write a novel in a month" down to concrete, bite-sized, predictable and manageable terms.  Much like pulling the mask off the Ghost of Coldwater Marsh, it helps dispel the fear associated with the daunting task ahead.

So far, my November looks about like this:

• Lunch hour writing:  450 words (time: 1 hour)
• Weekday night writing:  1,200 words (time: 2-3 hours)
• Weekend writing: 3,350 words (time: 5-6 hours)

The above are daily estimates based on past years and past writing samples.  My minimum average writing speed is about 450 words an hour, so I plan to calculate everything on a realistic worst-case scenario.  With luck, I'll only gain ground against these estimates.

To further break that down, I have to start with what I can count on not having.  My Thursday nights are taken up by the one regular social engagement I'm not going to pass on this November, dropping four days from my 30-day total.  In addition, I can't count on being undistracted enough during family times at Thanksgiving to write on either of those days, marking two more off the list.  Lastly, I have a short conference at the very start of the month, during which I'm certain at least one night will be occupied.

All told, I'm losing 7 of my weekday nights and 3 lunchtime periods to the various engagements I can foresee.  That comes to a grand total of 9,750 words I will have to make up.  Thankfully, my word counts listed above are actually above and beyond my 50,000 word limit.

There are 22 weekdays in November, plus 8 weekend days.  Totaling that up with the above estimates (bear in mind, every weekday carries a lunchtime with it), we get over 63,000 words for the month.  Subtract the days we're losing, and I'm left with 53,350 words, meaning I can miss one weekend day and still be on target.

In addition, I've decided to take the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off to relax and to play catch-up near the end of the month.  Since it technically counts as a weekend, we subtract the normal weekday total (1200 + 450 = 1650) from the normal weekend total (3350) to get the additional buffer (1700).  I now have both a free weekend day and a free weekday in my buffer for the month, not counting the days I can already guess I won't be writing.

With any luck, that will be more than enough to account for the days that go off sideways and surprise me halfway through the month (as I'm sure some will).  Considering I am also well under my total available hours for both weeknights and weekends and have assumed I'll constantly be at my lowest average pace, I feel fairly good about leaping forward with confidence.

Now to finish this stupid outline...

Atkins, Eat Your Heart Out

I may have picked a bad time to go on a diet.

With NaNoWriMo coming, it's normally hard to think about anything else.  Between the excitement that comes with breaking ground on a new story and the anxiety that comes with making daily wordcounts, there really isn't much room left.

That is, of course, unless you've just started a new job and are working towards buying your first house.

So I decided that now would be a good time to go on a diet.  You know, just to keep things interesting.

Setting aside for a moment the rapid eroding effect stress has on gustatory discipline, now is really not the time to be splitting my focus yet one more way.  If I were a Pokemon, I would have had to lose at least one basic ability by now.

I'm guessing "Rest."

Honestly, the stress of house-buying alone is enough to make anyone consider surfing face-first down the buffet line at a Golden Corral.  Thankfully, our move-in date isn't until December, or I'd be bowing out of NaNo this year entirely.  As it is, we just have to do little things like coordinate inspections and pack up the entire house and everything we own.

And how hard can that be?

I'm actually somewhat glad for the house-buying timing:  all the minor fix-ups and prep work we have to undertake this month and next should make for ideal small, offline distractions that I will hate just enough to be chased back to writing before long.  It should allow me to take a break, still do something productive, and then want to return to writing just to take a break.

At least, that's the theory.


So why on earth would I choose now to try and lose weight?  Some would suggest a recent head injury or some form of genetic mental disorder, and they'd be close, but the truth is that NaNoWriMo involves all sort of dieting already, adding food to the list seemed like the next natural step.

Writing 50,000 words in a month with what little time you have already means setting aside other things you would much, much rather be doing.  Some of these are important (seeing your friends, being romantic with a partner or spouse, petting your suddenly overly-insistent cats) while others seem to materialize just to throw temptation in your path (video games, TV reruns, an endless chain of linked Wikipedia entries, the entire archives of a webcomic you only just discovered this month, and so forth).

You're dieting from all these things already, cutting down on amount and frequency without necessarily cutting them out altogether.  You have to content yourself with small portion sizes for your non-writing activities, big or small, to make the best use of the hours you have (which never seem to be quite as many as you thought you would).

So cutting back on fatty and sugar-heavy foods isn't that far out of the way for my personal discipline.  There are also additional gains, at least in theory:  not being over-full means avoiding the sleepy after-meal coma that is only worsened by the steady blink of a cursor at the tail end of your last written sentence.  Not going out for meals means time saved in transit as well as quicker meals and the excuse to get up and so something on your feet (instead of sitting in front of a computer some more).

There is something to be said for change of venue and the break that food provides, which is all the more reason to pick November to diet in.  Several small meals throughout the day have been shown to be healthier three large ones (or, as it is for many of us, two large ones).  Several small meals not only spread out the energy boost from the calories involved, they provide more brief breaks to the routine.

Best of all, toward the end of the month, Americans at least can enjoy Thanksgiving and glut themselves on food galore as a sort of late-game reward for all their dedication thus far, in both their writing and their waistline.  It makes an excellent target to aim for with enough time left before the end of the month for the sort of tidying up we can all expect to need.

That said, there are some things that should never be included in the dieting.  Work, for instance, doesn't take a break for November.  Romance, as well, should not be cut out entirely for risk of ending the month with half a novel and half an empty apartment (unless you're lucky and your partner is also taking on the NaNoWriMo challenge).

It's good to be a lucky man :)

Pets are another exception, but not because a month of reduced affection would risk severing their relationship with something that you feed and clean up after.  Pets, science has shown, are walking, swimming, squirming stress relief.  Cats especially seem enthralled with the writing process, and will not be denied their primal duty to interrupt it whenever possible.

Let them.  Few animals are as calming, as inspiring or as entertaining as a cat; doubly so when invested in making their presence felt (driven by the impetus of being ignored in favor of blinking text on a screen).
Besides, many writers already know that cats are a warm and fuzzy reminder of a hard and chilling truth:

If you can't type from under the purring lump of a sleeping cat, it might be time to consider another hobby.

"Shinigami Blues II" - Rob visits Mona

With a sound like a muffler popping, Jack landed on the couch, deflating in time with the cushions beneath him as he deftly turned on the TV without taking the remote off the coffee table.  "Hurry up, babe," he called, shooing their old, grey cat off the armrest as he stretched out longways and let out the sigh of a man who had supped of his girlfriend's grandmother's secret-recipe pumpkin pie.  "The game's about to start!"

"Coming!" Mona shouted back, putting the last of the dishes in to soak with a triumphant smile on her face.  Her grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe had gone off without a hitch; a kindness, given how badly Jack's attempt at chicken kiev had turned out.

She wiped her hands on the towel by the sink and turned off the light, pausing by the window as something caught her eye.  There, for a moment, behind the fog that had sprung up when the heat of the kitchen air met the chill winter evening outside the window, she could have sworn she saw a boy's face.  Looking closer now, she knew it was nothing, but for that one moment, she would have guessed-- no, she was sure.  It had looked just like Rob.

Her smile returned as she headed into the living room where Jack lay already cursing at the game on TV, no longer a triumphant grin but the calm, contented look of a happy woman.  "Who's winning?" she asked as Jack sat up to give her a seat beside him.  The old, grey cat hopped up onto the armrest as she sat, giggling as Jack leaned over to kiss her cheek before she was distracted by the TV.  "Oh come on!" she shouted, sending the cat flying with the sound of it.  "There's no way that was 'holding'..."

Outside. in the stillness of the winter air, Rob sighed to himself, watching through the living room window at the two lovers enjoying the game, or at least delighting in barking at the officiating crew.  He no longer felt the cold on his skin, but he could still sense it in the air, the way a deaf man might imagine a symphony sounds.

The whole world looked like winter, from the empty branches of the trees outside their two-bedroom apartment to the high, wispy clouds soaring silently by overhead.  The quiet street sang of winter and coming snow.  Inside, all the couple could think about was the warmth of each other and the glow of the TV screen.  They could hardly be expected to notice the faithful spirit lingering outside, blending into the cold silence like a corpse.

It was his first Thanksgiving without her, Rob knew, though he never expected it would hurt like this.  It was his favorite holiday in the way most children revere Halloween.  It wasn't out of any misguided sense of patriotism but rather a love of sitting around with family, stuffed to the gills, playing Trivial Pursuit while the Lions lost again.

More than that, it was the day they had first met.  Rob and Jack had been on their way home from a party on campus, bucking tradition with a dozen other friends that night in favor of good, old-fashioned college debauchery when they ran into Mona trying to push her old Geo down Cates Avenue, alone.

Rob could still remember the effort she'd gone to to convince them she didn't need any help, all scraped up with no jacket on a cold November night, trying to negotiate the pedestrian speed bumps of the long campus drive.  She hadn't wanted to admit she had run out of gas because she couldn't afford it until her next paycheck cleared.  Nevermind that the two half-sober boys offering to help had barely two cents to clap together themselves.

They had barely gotten it up the long hill to East campus when the snow had started falling. Rob could still hear the crunch beneath their feet as the winter stillness had set in around them.  He could still feel the churning in his gut, as much from trying to push a car uphill after a night's worth of drinking as from the looks he kept getting from the girl working to steer the vehicle.

Inside, the two lovers cheered, Jack nearly falling off the couch as he threw his hands into the air in twin fists of celebration.  The ghost outside couldn't help but smile, remembering the soft talk with Mona afterwards, offering to drive her to class the next day, narrowly avoiding the offer to put her up that night, purely for the convenience.

He vividly remembered the feel of the snowball slamming into his head from behind, hurled by his less-than-sober friend.  The mere memory of the chill sent a tickle up the back of his neck.  But more than that first salvo in the fight that would ensue, he remembered Mona's laugh, her cheeks red from the cold and flush from the effort of getting her car home.  The sound of it seemed distant now, teasing the edges of his senses like the sight of someone ducking around a corner just as you were starting to catch up.

Another tickle grazed his neck as Mona settled into Rob's arms, her eyes trailing again to the window.  For a moment, she was looking right at him, and the ghost felt the memory of his heart start to swell.  He almost forgot he was in the Slip, in the space between worlds.  For however brief a moment, he forgot he was dead.  But then her eyes trailed back to the glow from the TV as she tucked her legs up beneath her and leaned against the warm body of the boy sitting beside her.  Feeling all altogether new kind of chill, Rob turned to go.

He stopped at his first step, staring down at the form of the small boy glaring up at him from beneath the dusty black hoodie with the faded skull print on the front.  "What are you doing here?" Rob asked before he could stop himself.  He knew already Shin wouldn't be here if he hadn't screwed up.  He was only waiting to learn what it was he had done this time.

"Same as you," Shin answered, not taking his hands out of his pockets, "doing something stupid."

Rob could feel his temper start to flare at the boy's softly-spoken words.  To his surprise, the world seemed to echo his sentiment.  An unseasonal heat moved swiftly into the yard, carried on a sudden and eerie wind.  "You're going to bust me over this?" Rob asked, not bothering to mask his irritation.  "I figured you, of all people, would understand."

"Don't," Shin said firmly, turning to go.  "Besides, I'm here as a friend.  If Finnegan caught you coming out here off-duty..."  The boy went silent, staring at Rob's empty hands with a look of horror on his face.  "...Where the hell is your scythe?"

Rob looked down at himself, pulling open the sides of his red and white letter jack as if the object might come falling out by surprise.  "I dunno," he answered earnestly, "I guess I left it in my locker."

"Idiot!" Shin shouted, his hands coming free from his pockets immediately.  The sudden heat that had started to gather in the slip vanished like a scared kitten, leaving a heavy darkness in its place.  The boy grabbed Rob's much larger hand and forced his own small, black, gnarled baton into the other boy's fist.  "Do you try to be this stupid, or does it just come naturally to you?"

"Hey!" Rob shouted back, stirring a new spark into the air around them.  "You went blazing across hell to get your boyfriend back--" he started, ignoring the warning look on the smaller boy's hooded face.  "Where do you get off telling me what to do with my time??"

"What to do with your--" Shin repeated, his brow furrowing in a pained look of confusion.  He grabbed Rob's arm at the wrist and held it up under much protest from his partner.  Rob stared through his hand at the boy, trying to wrench it free without any success.  It was then that he realized he wasn't looking past his hand at Shin, but through it.  There was only the barest outline of a hand left, thickest at the edges like the lines around a sandbox.

His point made, Shin let go the boy's wrist and tucked his hands back into his pockets with a forceful shove.  "You can't come out here into the Slip without your scythe," he said as the boy stared unblinkingly at his own translucent palm, "how many times do I have to remind you, these things are for our protection out here!  Do you want to become an un-tet and get hunted from here till Doomsday?"

Shin rolled his eyes, swearing something under his breath that Rob couldn't quite make out.  "Souls fray in the Slip, Rob.  That means us, too."  His tone softening to clear concern, Shin turned and took his first few steps back toward the still-open portal behind him, sticking out of the side of an old Volkswagen van.  "Forgive me to trying to save what passes for your life, jackass," he muttered, trudging across the parking lot toward the yellow glow and soft hum of the elevator back to the Central Office.

Rob couldn't stop staring at his hand, watching as it slowly began to solidify, the color pulsing like blood coursing into his veins again until his hand was back to its old self.  He lifted his other hand, still clenched tightly around Shin's scythe in its collapsed form.  He shut his eyes just as tight, swearing under his breath and marching off after Shin, well aware of the risk he had taken.  He could only think of how made Mona would be if she knew the risk he had taken.  With broad steps, he walked into the elevator after Shin, breathing out a heavy sigh rife with frustration.

"Sorry," he said curtly, offering Shin his scythe back.  He was too angry with himself to bother making the apology sound more heartfelt.

"S'ahright," Shin answered, staring straight ahead as the doors swung shut and the feeling of movement rocketed up beneath them.  "You were right, by the way," he added, chancing a glance up at the boy's face.  Rob seemed earnestly confused at the statement, so Shin explained:  "I do understand."


With a deep breath, Rob nodded, resting his head back against the wall of the elevator.  Their shift would be starting soon, and he hadn't slept a wink.  It was shaping up to being another long day in Purgatory.

"Dawnwatcher" - Sisters Reunited

A crisp and welcome wind skated down across the empty street and greeted the lone traveler making her way up the mountain.  The steep climb up Mon Shara to the tiny village of Havenbrook under the stiff afternoon sun had left her feeling dusty and warm well out of season.  The chill air from high on the mountainside made her feel a welcome guest.  She worried her reception from the more human occupants might not be quite so refreshing.

Glancing up at the tall and weathered archway marking the first steps into town, the traveler half hoped it might all be as abandoned as it looked; empty streets, shuttered windows, not a whiff of chimney smoke to be seen.  But the small handful of dilapidated homes all bore fresh evidence of repair, and the road leading onward up the mountain toward the few scattered homesteads nestled higher on its flank showed the familiar ruts of recent use.

Resting a hand on the pommel of her sword to keep it from slapping the side of her leg, the traveler swallowed the dry air at the back of her throat and stepped into the peaceful village square.

"Ruth?" Kestrid's voice called from somewhere in the basement.

"What?" the young girl minding the store called back, privately cursing at the uneven leg in the stool she was standing on.  It rocked dangerously back and forth as she stretched for the latch on the shutters on the high, round window to let out the foul odor echoing up from the basement below where Kes was no doubt whipping up something that could probably kill them all.

"Could you bring me that bottle of lola root and some thallus paste?" Kes called again, her words somewhat obscured by the rising sound of something popping.  "...Quickly, please," she added with some urgency.

Ruth swore somewhat less privately, rolling her eyes and giving up on the quest to get the shutters open.  "Coming!" she shouted back, mocking Kes' ever-pleasant tone with clear indignation.  Carefully, she dismounted the stool and swiped the thallus paste from behind the shop counter, tucking it under one arm before looking about the store for the lola root.

The bright orange bulbs smiled back at her from their home in a small glass jar sitting high atop a shelf above the door.  With a string of utterances not fit for any ears but her own, Ruth set the thallus paste firmly on the counter, snatched up the stool with the uneven leg and propped it in front of the door, grumbling all the while.

"'I was the top-ranked rune-caster before the golden city was destroyed,'" she said to herself, striking a pose with her fingers pointed at her chest, mocking Kes' typical pomp and poise.  "'I weave the very fabric of reality like strands of thread," she continued as she climbed up the stool again and began reaching for the lola root.  "'Yet I simply cannot be bothered to pen a single spell that fetches my materials down from high shelves, or fixes my poor assistant's wobbly-legged stool, or the busted chimney vent..."

Ruth's fingertips could only vainly paw at the lip of the jar, causing it to teeter and spin until it sat even further back on the shelf.  Hearing another call from downstairs, the girl stepped onto the seat of the stool, bracing against the rickety shelf with one hand while reaching for the lola root with the other.  "'Oh no,'" she added to the pantomime, feigning a look of distaste that wasn't far removed from her current mood, "'such pursuits are beneath a master arcanist.'"

Outside, the traveler continued her search of the many houses, walking up to each in hopes the name across the doorway might be the one she was looking for.  To her dismay, none of the names seemed familiar.  Worse still, many of them had been entirely scratched out or removed, leaving her to wonder if any of them were still accurate at all.

She was nearly to the point of starting up the hill toward the scattered, outlying homesteads when she caught whiff of a familiar scent.  A thin trail of smoke was ushering up from a small vent beside the last house in the row.  A faded apothecary's sign still hung on a rusted hook out front.  The smell was one she knew by heart:  the tickle of copper tinged with a fragrant oil compound and a note of old scrivener's ink.  The scent of her uncle's workshop.  She had found Kestrid at last.

The jar of lola root rocked again, but this time spun full circle until its lip was finally close enough for Ruth to grasp with the tips of her longest fingers.  "Gotcha!" she said, smiling in triumph and dragging the jar toward her as the popping sound continued with renewed fervor from the basement door behind her.

"Ruth, I don't mean to rush you..." Kes' voice had gained the slightest hints of concern, "but if I could trouble you for that thallus paste--"  Another rapid series of pops drowned out the remainder of her request as the lola root jar neared the edge of the shelf.  Ruth brought her other hand over to cup the bottom of it for stability as she finally drew it free and kicked one leg back to begin her descent.

It was then that she heard the squeak of the door hinge below her.

"Kestrid?" the traveler called, peering into the dark shop as her eyes adjusted from the sunlit street.  The smell of ink was all but overbearing inside, and the sound of popping told her Kes was still hard at work.  "Kes?" she called louder, swinging the door wide and stepping into the room.

The door caught something unexpectedly in its arc, knocking it aside with some force, so eager had the traveler been to be reunited with her sister.  The woman turned in time to see something falling as if from a high shelf.  At once, her arms went out to catch it and ferry it to the ground, surprised to find that it had all the warmth and give of a human form.

Ruth stared back at the stranger with equal surprise, catching mostly her outline shadowed against the bright sun from outside.  Strands of wavy yellow hair were tucked behind slightly pointed ears, but the wide shoulders of her armor made the rest of her form little more than a bulky specter.  She hardly noticed as the jar of lola root landed squarely in her lap, cradled instinctively by her hands while the rest of her mind struggled with what to think of the intruder.

"Ruth, I really cannot understand why it is so difficult to--" Kes started to say as she stormed up the stairs from the basement, covered from hip to head in a rich, violent ink from the backs of her thick leather gloves to the forward-flung locks of her wavy brown hair; what little strands had tugged their way free from the pin binding the rest of it back into a bun.

She paused at once when she saw the scene at the door:  Ruth cradling the jar of lola root next to the tipped-over stool as light flooded into the room through the open door, highlighting the symbol on the armor of the woman crouching on the floor.  The woman slowly set Ruth down and got to her feet, meeting Kes' puzzled gaze with one of worry, unsure of the reception she was about to receive, and rather wishing the only thing on her mind to say was something more cordial than "oops."

"...to--" Kes stammered, trying to finish her original admonishment, but the sight of the woman standing in the doorway had completely disrupted her train of thought.  She reached up a hand to tuck some of the stray strands of hair behind one of her pointed ears, smearing a line of dark purple ink across it as she did so.  Her face moved quickly through a series of emotions, the kindest being puzzlement and the least kind being one of great anger; all of them forming a wordless monologue of Kestrid's internal struggle over how to feel at seeing her half-sister again.

The traveler, by contrast, shifted slowly to a bashful smile as her eyes finished adjusting to the dark interior of the shop.  She smoothed down the front of her armor out of habit and cleared her throat quickly, saying only:  "Hi, Kes."

A pop from the workshop below caused Kes to twitch noticeably, though the sound also seemed to startle her into action.  She turned and clutched the thallus paste from the counter, pointing to the jar of lola root still cradled in Ruth's lap.  Her young assistant hadn't moved since her fall, too busy staring up at the two women and waiting for someone to explain to her what on earth was going on.

The traveler reached down to pick up the jar and offer it to Kestrid, closing the space between them at last. It was only then that Ruth realized just how much taller the other woman was.  The traveler smiled as Kes gripped the jar of lola root and turned toward the doorway to the basement again.  "You've picked a bad time to come and visit me, Sydney," Kes told the woman.  "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"It's good to see you, too," the traveler said softly, watching Kes take the first step down toward the basement.  Kes then paused, shifting the jar to the crook of her arm and tossing a glance back at the traveler standing in her shop.

"Why are you here?" she asked, as if the question had been discussed before, only moments ago.

"I just wanted to see my sister," the traveler said.  "My tour was up, and I--" she hesitated, breathing out a long sigh.  "I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Whoa whoa whoa," Ruth interjected, finally getting back to her feet.  She stepped into the space between them, looking quickly from Sydney to Kes and back again.  "...You're her sister?"

"Half-sister," Kestrid corrected, continuing her descent without another word.  Ruth spun at once, one finger raised in a gesture of admonishment, only to find its target already out of sight.  She felt a strong hand rest on her shoulder as Sydney stepped further into the shop.

"Don't worry about it," she told the girl.  In the short space while Ruth wasn't looking, a more confident smile had appeared in place of the troubled look the woman had borne earlier.  "It's just like old times."

Ruth was about to ask, but found her question cut short by a rather substantial pop from the basement below, one loud enough to shake the floor beneath them.  It was followed at once by a symphony of glass shattering and one oddly calm "oh, bother," from the resident arcanist.  Ruth and Sydney exchanged a look, each looking as fearful as the other, and then hurried down the stairs to the basement together.

Prep Work - Part 0

Any great novel (and most of the bad ones) starts with a great deal of planning, plotting (har har) and, where possible, scheming in order to lay the proper framework into which one may pour the soulful imaginings that pass for content these days.  But before planning can begin, there is one other important step the average author must undertake.

Planning.

Before one can recklessly dive into the world of outlining, storyboarding and otherwise sculpting the bare skeleton of one's designs, one must first plan the plan that is to come.  That's right:  meta-planning.

To call this a "must" is a bit of a misnomer, but the truth is that most of us do it already, or might strongly benefit from it if we do not.  Meta-planning largely involves both aligning ones particular assault vector for approaching the work as a whole, as well as carving out the overall workflow of the writing/editing/sleeping process.

It starts (or at least, mine starts) with scheduling.  NaNoWriMo centers around a set constant ratio:  50,000 words in 30 days.  November will always have 30 days (at least until the Romans realize someone came along and snuck two new months in), but the set number of those days that will be usable for writing varies from year to year and from person to person.

In America at least, there is at least one holiday late in the month to interrupt the normal flow of work.  Writing or typing with hands slick with turkey gravy is generally ill-advised, to say nothing of the effects of tryptophan on the will to continue working in any form.  Beyond that, there will no doubt be days (or parts of days) that are denied the writer in terms of workable hours.

Work, for many of us, is the biggest consideration.  Sticking out an 8+ hour shift without access to our materials or the quiet, interrupt-free environment that is so often a prerequisite to the writing process puts a serious onus on the remaining hours of the day.  Given that another 6-8 hours (if you're lucky) are also dedicated to sleep, we've stranded our writing time on a surprisingly small 8-hour island with interruptions like traffic, dinner and any semblance of a social life all warring for time.

So, scheduling becomes a must.

Figure out all the times you know you won't be writing.  Trips out of town, special occasions, regular after-hours meetings that can't be skipped; mark them all off so that you know how many actual workable nights you have available.

Divide 50,000 by that to get your actual per diem word count.

If your workplace allows you to get away for an hour or so for lunch, mark each workday down with an hour for lunch to add to your total.  Once you figure out your hourly pace (wait till November, it's bound to change), you'll know how much less you have to do in the evenings if you can spare yourself 30-45 minutes each day at lunch.

Worried you won't have time on your lunch break?  Start packing a lunch.  Eat at your desk or near the office if you can to minimize time lost due to travel.  You'll thank yourself later.

The next part of scheduling is the one you're going to hate later, but for most of us, it does prove a time-saver and a fire-lighter-underer.  Let's pretend, for the moment, that that's a word.

Mark out milestones on a regular (preferably weekly) basis.  The day is up to you, whichever day starts your writing week (or ends it, if you prefer), mark the number of words you should have by that point.  Use your per diem count from earlier to get a realistic estimate, in case you wind up temporarily ahead of (or behind) the curve.

The running totals will give you not only a goal to shoot for (and save you constantly breaking out the calculator), they will offer a measuring stick throughout so that you know full well how far ahead or behind you are.  Doing daily estimates can be crippling, and tends to make us fixate on the numbers.  Weekly estimates allow for the much-needed wiggle room without letting us get too far off the mark for too long.

Any time you have a holiday or a string of unavailable days approaching, make a mark immediately after the gap so that you immediately know what the wordcount needs to be when you return.  It should save you time (and human error) recalculating and also put you swiftly back into the writing mindset.

Once you have an idea of what you're real November looks like, it's time to break ground on the easy part:  actually putting together a story.

Second Wind

I suppose I really should've posted a sign...

The last two months, I've let the Anomalies (which have since been renamed) lay fallow while I worked to transition to a new job.  The blog was originally intended as a way to keep my writing fresh as well as to let me comment on the craft, much as my other periodical lets me comment on my more profit-bearing line of work.

Unfortunately, moving to a new position and working on the final edits for my first two for-pro-publication works did not also leave time (or energy and inspiration) enough to keep updating two blogs (or, for a time, even one).  So, this one was left to fall flat in favor of tackling the writing on which its typical content dwelt.

With only a month left between now and NaNoWriMo 2011, however, I felt I couldn't hold off any longer for fear of losing momentum forever.

That said, the rename to "Prose by Numbers" is more than simply superficial.

Part of my lack of inspiration wasn't purely from becoming busy with other things; after a while, droning on about what little an amateur writer can understand about the pro publishing industry led to a predictable lack of genuine, original material.  So in an effort to avoid becoming stale while I embark on Step Zero of becoming a published novelist, I'm re-purposing the blog to something slightly more inward-facing.  

For the next month, I will attempt to write one snippet a week (posted Fridays) of four upcoming works, not including the one I intend for November (in keeping with the NaNo rules about pre-work) to get back into step as far as doing something new, and as a sort of vain apology to any readers who were left very much in the cold the past two months.

The remaining weekends may also play host to commentary on the upcoming NaNo project and all the planning that goes into preparing oneself to try and pen 50,000 words in 30 days.

Both posting types will continue into November, when the content will shift to snippets of the project at hand and the commentary will be noticeably less prep and notably more present-day flailing and exasperated testimonials of the predictable backtracking and deadline-missing to come, all to grant a window into the very fragile mind of someone trying to write a book.

And, in the interest of not restarting my routine with only meta-level content about the site's new direction, I feel it's only fair I start describing the vague plan that is my intended work for NaNoWriMo 2011.

The tentatively-titled "A.J. Pendlebolt:  Gnomish Investigator" started from the title alone (and hasn't gone very far beyond it at this point).  The name came to me in the typical way:  just before I fell asleep, and mingled with a dozen other pre-somnolent musings from the tween space between our waking selves and the surreality of our dreams.

What surprised me was how much this particular title gripped me, largely in its absurdity:  a clash between the intrigue pulp novels of the 40s and 70s and the fantasy realms spawned from Tolkien's master world.  Without the word "gnomish," I might never have given the work a second thought.

Instead, it has lurked in the forefront of my mind in the months since its inception (no pun intended), growing in the slow, sprawling fashion of a lichen on a sunlit stone.  What it's left me with at current is some distant notion of a detective story set against the backdrop of a high-magic fantasy world; much the way Blade Runner did with its high-tech setting, leaving the original detective story largely intact from its noir roots.

AJ's story, by contrast, will likely be the lighthearted, humorous take on the genre that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang excelled at, although as a less self-aware parody.  The story itself will be quite serious (as I understand murders generally are), but the tone will be notably less Casablanca and noticeably more Indiana Jones.

At least, that's the intent.

As to the crime, the world, and the title-character detective himself, the details are all still very much fuzzy.  But then, that's what October is for.