I have not been a good time manager this week. I have spent way too much time working, fixing dinner, playing with the dogs, doing laundry, cleaning the house, running the kids to and from school, eating and sleeping, and far too little time writing.

I am really behind the daily quota (to the tune of 6300+ words), but last night I had a moment. I was tired and everything had conspired to make it a bad mood evening. I wanted to, as everything seemed to tell me, just toss in the towel (forgive me, Ford Prefect) and hang it up for another year. There is too much going on at work, even more coming with training starting next week and the holidays coming on fast and I am over 6000 words behind.

I really wanted to give up, but I stopped and remembered what Neil Gaiman said in his NaNoWriMo Pep Talk ( http://is.gd/4TFGw ) and that gave me the gumption to believe that I can finish.

I will find the time, even if it has to be in 30 minute scraps.

I said I would do it and I will do it.

Go Me!

I am really behind the daily quota, but I will work hard and I will catch up. My story has moved into the next phase and the path is clear. All is shaping up well and I am excited to see where all the paths lead.

Here is where we are:
Day: 9
Words: 10268
Target: 15003
Mood: Cheerful

I am feeling good with my first week’s progress (it was further than I made it last year) and am looking forward to a fun weekend and more writing next week.

Here is where we are:
Day: 6
Words: 9005
Target: 10002
Mood: Satisfied

I’m rolling now and it is time to roll on, after a little rest.

Here is where we are:
Day: 5
Words: 8455
Target: 8335
Mood: Proud

Here is where we are:
Day: 4
Words: 5679
Target: 6668
Mood: Pressured

The race is on now.

Here is where we are:
Day: 3
Words: 4028
Target: 5001
Mood: Determined

Here is where we are:
Day: 2
Words: 3421
Target: 3334
Mood: Tired

Good Night!

As the site says: Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!
The goal is to to write as fast and as much as you can and hit the goal of 50,000 words before December.

My NaNoWriMo page is here. Please follow along and if you are participating, too, I’d love to have you as a writing buddy!

Last year, I tried my first go at the prize and got nearly 10,000 words in before the world forced its way back in to my mind and I folded to the pressure.
I was writing organically (no outline) and so it was easy to distract me from the story.

This year, I am trying something new.
I begun my story by pushing away from the keyboard and taking pencil in hand, started the first few pages on paper – Yes, I actually began the novel by hand writing the first few pages, to get my mind going. At the speed I was jotting down ideas, I left some stuff out, and now that I am back to typing what I jotted down, I am fleshing out the story. It is not an outline, as such, but it is working for me. The blank electronic page was daunting, but a notebook page was an easier canvas on which to begin the picture.

Here is where we are:
Day: 1
Words: 1543
Target: 1667
Mood: Excited

“So, tell me what you do.”

The answer I gave them was succinct, only because it was Twitter and I couldn’t exceed 140 characters.
“Security Analyst by day, Computer Solutions guy by nature, Finder of facts/research for fun, and fledgling writer by night.”

Fortunately, because I was chatting with a professional writer, the dreaded questions did not pop up:
“Oh! What have you written?”
or
“Why do you write?”

The first is easier, if a little embarassing, “Nothing much yet. I am working on a couple of projects.”
That generally gets me an “Oh,” or “That’s nice.”

The second question is harder, especially if the first one was asked prior to it.

Why do I write?

I have written things since High School. By “written things,” I mean to say projects that were not assigned to me or associated with school and in some sort of format or standard way.

In High School, I filled notebook after notebook with poetry, most really bad poetry, but by the time I was a Senior and into college, I felt secure enough to give them away as gifts to special people.

Aside from the poetry, the rest of my creative writing energies were consumed by Role Playing Games. I wrote suppliments for publication, adventures for private and tournament / convention use, backgrounds, side stories, histories, and worlds related to the Role Playing Games I frequented.

This culminated in the beginning of a Game Design company, after college, called Asgard Game Designers. I and my partner traveled to conventions, sold some of our creations, shared others, made a lot of friends, spent a lot of time, and even made a little money. What a life – Write and Play games and get paid for it. Like many dreams of youth, it proved much harder to make work than it was to play at it.

Fast Forward a dozen years of almost no writing aside from assignments and reports for work. I have some friends that liked the same RPGs I played in college and we start playing – and I start writing again. Soon after that, my family went to Nairobi, Kenya for 5 months. While there, the last Harry Potter book came out, which we read as a family. As soon as the book ended, I began thinking about a story – completely unrelated, not even magic. It was not long until I began not being able to sleep at night until I began to jot down some of these scenes into a story.

Here we are, two years later and I am still working on that story, and several others. I write short stories, flash fiction, almost anything to get the pop-up stories out of my hear so I can get back to the story I really want to tell.

So, why do I write?
I have stories I want to tell and some other stories squirm their way out in the meantime.
It is not so much that I choose to write, but more that I cannot imagine not doing so.

Clearer now? Glad you asked?

“Huh? What?”

“That was a long blink. Are you still with us?”

“Who us?”

“Wow. What happened to you? I think I should be insulted, but you have me worried, now.”

Blinking again, I begin taking in my surroundings. There are several tables around me, us, mostly attended by two’s and three’s, involved in their own conversations. A few of the tables have ceased their conversations to watch me, I know not why.

After a second, I feel a twinge in my left knee and look down, expecting to catch a mosquito feasting on my blood. Instead of a mosquito, I see the planks of the floor and my knee resting thereon. In my left hand, I am holding a black velvet box. Curious about this box, I reach over and lift its lid to reveal a band of gray silver topped by a round diamond, I suppose it is a diamond, anchored in place by six tiny brackets of the same grey silver as the ring – an engagement ring. Staring at the ring for a moment, I marvel at how the light dances across and through the stone before caressing the dull silver ring. One day, I would love to be able to offer a ring like this to a woman.

Feeling my knee twinge again, something pops into my mind. A thought that I may have missed something occurs to me and I try to recall what was just said and by whom. Someone said, “…but you have me worried, now.” Wondering who had said that, after glancing around and seeing no one particularly paying me any attention, I look up from my kneeling posture to find someone looking quite intently at me.

Her face is, quite possibly, the most beautiful I have ever seen. Her hair, which appears to bounce at just above her shoulders while gently curling in on itself, is a soft auburn, but not as muted as strawberry blonde. Her cheek bones are high and her complexion is clear and fair, with only the slightest hint of a few freckles dusting her small nose. Her lips are the color of pale pink rose buds without a hint of any color application and her eyes are deep blue, like that of deep within a glacier. The deep blue eyes look like ice, but it is me that melts. Her expression is one of amusement, but there is concern in the eyes.

After taking in all the detail of this beauty before me, my focus slides out a bit and I notice that my kneeling position has attracted some onlookers, each smiling at me as I remain kneeling in front of this beautiful woman. I refocus on her face and notice that the concern behind the eyes is growing.

“Are you worried?”

“I am a bit. Are you okay?”

What an interesting question. I, for some reason, would really like to be truthful to this woman, so I take a moment and give this some consideration. Other than the twinge in my knee, which I hurt when I had a college job at a movie theatre by repeatedly slamming into a kneeling position on the concrete floor while readying the projectors for another showing, I am not feeling any pain. I am confused about why I am in this kneeling position. Perhaps I was retrieving something from the floor. Maybe the lady had dropped her napkin or fork and I had bent to return it to her.  Looking down for the dropped item, I see her dress – white and flowing. Something made of cotton and very becoming on her, with high heeled white boots that come up above her slender ankles and are adorned with several bright silver buckles. Embarrassed to have been eyeing this woman’s legs, I feel the back of my neck begin to prickle as the heat spreads up the back of my head and coming to rest on my ears and my own cheeks. Returning my attention to the floor, I can see nothing dropped, so perhaps I have already returned the item to her and she is curious as to why I am still here.

Thinking that I am intruding, I begin to put my hands down and lever my way up and out of her way when I, again, notice the black velvet box in my hand and am enchanted my the ring resting within. The sparkling stone winks up at me and the lights dance across my mind like a dream being scattered by morning’s light. A flash brings another thought to mind.

Straightening, I look up into her face and her eyes, very concerned now, more enchanting than the ring I hold. I lift the box and offer it to the woman.

“Yes, I am okay. Did you drop this?”

“No,” she says, a smile appearing at once on her face, like it was always there but was only hiding for a moment,  to match the dance in her eyes, “I did not drop that.”

Confusion, again, stretches its arms around me, “Is it not yours, then?”

“No, It has not been offered to me, yet, but I would gladly accept and treasure it, were it to be
so.”

Where a moment ago, I was kneeling and facing her right side, she turns a little in her seat so that I am so close to her right knee, although covered with her long white dress, I can feel her heat. She appears expectant, as she settles into this new position and her smooth hands and slender fingers settle into her lap.

Confused, I look back at the ring, which for the couple of times I have examined it over the past minute or two, suddenly seems familiar. Curious, I take the ring out of its box and gingerly place the box on the floor beside her white boot. My eyes linger on the boot leather and the silver buckles and they, too, come into familiarity as if seeing them for the hundredth time, instead of only the second. Looking back to the ring, held between my right finger and thumb, I catch a glint from within the band. There is something written there. Angling the ring to better catch the light, I read the inscription, “As long as the stars shine,” and another flash of familiarity arcs down my spine. Those are my words. I promised myself that I would only marry once, and it would be forever. How could my words have gotten on this ring, unless they are not my words, at all, but something I heard somewhere or perhaps I was not the only one to think of this bit of poetry?

A squeak of boot leather as she shifts slightly and I become aware of her again. Looking up into her face, but realizing that I will always remember her face and I really do not have to see her, I catch a confused, expectant, fearful mix of emotions as ripples in a small pool crash and overlap to and fro across its surface.

In a third flash, I see the scene as if from outside. I am kneeling at the feet of a beautiful woman with an engagement ring in my hand and she stares at me with an expectant, albeit confused, look on her face. There is something else there, too, her eyes portray something deeper, something magical. Dare I say it?

Her face, as if seen from memory, comes back to mind. I know that it would be the greatest joy if only I could awaken near her every day. To hold her hand and walk, to feel her heat, as I do now, and to catch glimpses of the look in her eyes would make me the happiest of men. Living a day without her, just the thought, brings moisture to my eyes. Her face comes back into crystal sharp focus and her eyes are, also, moist, whether from joy or fear, it is impossible to ascertain. I know, now, what I am here to do. At least, I know what the next step must be. I can feel the words forming. Dare I say it?

In a moment of blind fear, I look across the table, hoping to not see her date. For an instant, I reexamine our conversation and see how it could be that I am mistaken about everything. The ring box dropped from the table and I, being helpful, knelt to retrieve it and have paused in handing it back. She sits there, trying to be patient, but fearful that the expected engagement ring will come to some doom and, with it, her dreams of the perfect moment dashed. As my eyes search the table for other diners, I feel her shift, probably trying to see for what I am searching.

Seeing no other companions, I expel a breath that I was unaware of holding. At this exhalation, she tenses. With the words fully formed in my mind, I look up to her shining face. Her eyes shift away from mine for an instant then return, and only then am I aware of the cooling trail as a tear slips out and rolls down my right cheek. I take a breath but as I begin to speak, only a small squeak passes my lips. Feeling the embarrassment creeping up my neck again, I clear my throat and feel her combination sigh and soft single giggle. Taking another breath, I shine up into her face and receive the full force of her adoration, for it can be called nothing else, rain upon me and I am struck, as if slapped, that I have no idea of this woman’s, whom I love completely, name.

Leaning slightly forward, her knee brushes against me and as if suddenly lit by a supernova, her name springs from my mouth, almost as a shout.

“Kristyn! I love you. Will you marry me?”

Offering the ring toward her, she holds out a trembling left hand as tears slip from both of her eyes and trail down her cheeks. The ring slips onto her ring finger as if made to fit there, and only there. Squeaking with delight, she wraps her warm arms around my neck and begins to stand. Following her lead, we rise together, my knee breathing its own sigh that matches the collective sigh from the room, that had grown silent in the last few ticks of the clock. Rising to standing, she tips up on her toes and kisses me such that I have never before felt. The power in that kiss and the emotion behind it could move the world.

Parting from the kiss, into a hug, she cries out, “I love you, too. Of course I will marry you, Tom.”

The uproar of applause at her acceptance is completely drowned out by the rush that fills my head at the mention of my name. She had said it once before, but I had not recognized it. The whole of my life flashed before me. As it must be for a pitcher, at once content to be what it is and the next to have a universe of water pour into it, filling it to bursting and giving, or revealing, its true purpose, so it felt to me. Before the mentioning of my name, I was as the pitcher and only had memories of the past few moments. As soon as she said my name, the whole of my life, all my experience, memories, loves, hates, goals, successes, failures, and everyone in it poured into me and filled me up to this moment.

My gratitude at being refilled, chokes me as I try to speak, “Kristyn, you have made me complete. I love you even more than I did only a moment ago. Thank you.”

She did not realize, then, what I meant, but she would come to understand.