james-luscombe.com

an exerpt from my novel, "Broken"

I have been working on my NaNoWriMo novel, "BROKEN" for, well, five days now and have been making pretty good progress overall, but am still coming up a bit short on overall word count. In fact, I am presently about a day and a half behind. However, I am working very hard to get back on track and am doing extremely well on that front. What I am finding really interesting is how when something does "click", I am able to really run with it and do a lot of writing. It's those moments when things aren't quite "clicking" that are the problem. Oh well, I suppose that's just the way it goes for all writers, or at least I hope it is. Below is an excerpt from what I have so far.

Most of what Jonas knew about his childhood was a mix of parental hearsay and little things that came to him in nightmares. Many peaceful nights had come to abrupt ends when some dark image would leap into his dreams and remind him of those early days, when he could not hide from his fear and doubt. He would shoot up, out of his bed, covered in sweat, tears soaking his cheeks, shaking uncontrollably. Tonight was no different.

As he sat on the edge of the bed, wiping his thick hands over his face, he spoke aloud, "It was just a dream, it was just a dream". No matter how many times he uttered this phrase, he found no comfort in the words. He knew they were not true. Still, he continued repeating them, again and again, hoping that the slow cadence of his chant would calm him.

After several minutes he gave up. He slid his feet into his slippers and made his way to the kitchen. The light from the refrigerator made his eyes sting, but the cool air on his face balanced things out. He had no idea how long he had been standing there with the door open, when he finally realized he was no longer looking at the contents of the fridge, but was in fact staring into space. He closed the door and moved to the table.

day 01 of my "great american novel"

As I mentioned in my previous post, today was the first day of NaNoWriMo and this year I am going to give it a try. True to my word, I sat down and began writing. I must say that it was an interesting mix of exhiliration and abject terror, but I did it and I feel pretty good about the result. When I sat down to start writing I had no real idea of where I was going, (and still don't). However, as a "stream of consciousness" kind of exercise, I think that I have laid out a decent foundation upon which to build. Granted, at this point I have only written a couple of pages, (1200 words), but I feel like I have opened a good window into the main character and begun the framework of his relationship with the first supporting character. I have some ideas of where I might want to go from here, at least for the next couple of pages anyway. For now, I am going to take that as a good sign and run with it. After all, books generally are written one page at a time, so why put additional pressure on myself this early into the game? I am looking forward to sitting with it again tomorrow and seeing where it takes me. Who knows, I might just go all the way and actually write a book!