By Tuesday night I’d managed to make up a full day of last week’s lost weekend, and I was feeling pretty good about my progress as i took the train home. Work was still kicking my ass up and down the length of Manhattan, but the story was working and until this month is over that’s gotta be a higher priority than anything going on in the office. Even as we lose yet another project manager (I can’t even count how many of those have come and gone since I started this job) and the schedule for next week looks like it might make me want to trade places with a Thanksgiving turkey, I have larger concerns. So I’m on the train, feeling good about the writing I’d done the first couple of days of the week while trying not to think about the office, when I had a huge realization. All of a sudden from out of nowhere came the thought that I was going to have to end this story, and soon.

Sure, if all you’ve ever done is read a book, you must think that the fact of a story ending would be a pretty basic element. Integral to the entire writing process, even. And yet once you’ve tried to write a book, you learn that the ending is the part you spend most of your time in denial about. You write your words and you make your progress but you try not to think about where you’re headed because it’s too scary to do that. But here I was, more than 30,000 words under my belt, and I’d passed the point where I had to know where it was all going. I’d laid down some hints throughout the story. Red herrings and false turns and honest-to-goodness foreshadowing. But still, no thought to what they were all supposed to add up to. I was thinking way more about the 50,000 word goal, and not nearly enough about the “The End” goal.

Besides all that hiding from the ending that I just mentioned, there’s probably another reason for this. The two other times that I started and “won” NaNoWriMo, I did so by working on stories that I’d been carrying around in the back of my head for awhile. I had a basic understanding of some characters and where I wanted to steer the plot, but most of all I was pretty sure where I wanted these stories to end up. And the first time through, I managed to get there in 36 day and something like 82,000 words. The second time, I botched the ending and never finished, even though I wrote well more than 50,000 words, but the point is I knew basically where I was headed, even if I didn’t quite get there.

But this year? This year I sat down with nothing late the night of November 1, so I grabbed a couple of books off my bookshelf and began flipping pages randomly, looking at sentences and hoping to swipe one a a starting point. I didn’t find one I liked, so eventually I wrote this:

I grew up in an apartment building that I hated every minute I lived there.

From that, approximately 2,000 words flowed, and when I stopped for the night I had 2 directions I could’ve chosen. One was a straight up basic story idea about some loser with a job he didn’t like. The other was a light science fiction story about memory. The next day, I chose the science fiction route and never looked back. This story that I’d never realized I had in my head was being born right in front of me, and all I had to do was type it. But because I never knew this story existed until it started to exist, I had no goal. No thought about what it meant or where it was going. And it wasn’t until Dy 17 that I figured out I needed to know this stuff.

This epiphany was followed by two brutal work days, one of which was more than 10 hours long. But somewhere in that time I considered where the story might have been pointing, and I made sure to keep that in mind while banging out my 2,000 or so words per day. And while I’m pretty sure I’ll have to stick to my original plan of 60,000 words in a month, I think I have a shot at wrapping this up when I get there. It goes to show that there’s no better epiphany than the kind of epiphany you have when you’re on the subway. Because not only are you having important ideas that will help you later, you’re also forgetting you’re stuck on a subway train, at least for a couple of seconds.

But enough of that. I promised n excerpt, so you get an excerpt. More half-baked (at best) first draft writing that I’ve barely read and haven’t edited. Enjoy. Or tolerate and don’t come looking for me to complain to. Currently the story is named Rememories Are Made of This, but that’s going to change many more times before I’m done…

“Douglas Sweeney?” the voice on the other end asked. It was a deep, familiar voice.

“That’s me.”

“Douglas, it’s Lew Decker.” I already knew this, but said hello just the same. “It appears you’re in the middle of an eventful evening. Are you aware of this?”

“I just turned on the TV right now.”

“Good, good. I don’t like being the bearer of bad news.”

As if getting a call at home from Lewis wasn’t bad enough, the fact that he mentioned “bad news” in the first 30 seconds just made it that much worse. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I kept my mouth shut.

“Not that we blame you for what happened,” Lewis continued. “I’ve already been in touch with the partners and after a close review of this video, we all agree that both you and your colleague handled a difficult situation with professionalism and empathy. This is what we like to see from every Rememory, Inc. employee, though we prefer not to see it broadcast to the world on every cable news outlet. But we can’t unring that bell, can we?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“We appreciate your efforts, Douglas. From going out of your way on short notice to even be at the clinic, to thinking on your feet and handling a potentially awkward situation with great aplomb.”

“Do we know why this happened?”

“Not for sure. Not yet. We’re investigating this closely, and we’ve enlisted the authorities as well. Obviously this was an attempt to discredit us. It appears someone wanted you to agree to help this boy even though all of our guidelines state clearly that you should not. I’m surprised they bothered to release it once you denied him his request. Have you had a chance to listen to the commentary about the video?”

“Just a little bit,” I said.

“It’s not worth watching, trust me. But if you do see any of it, you’ll notice that this time around our critics are grasping at the thinnest of straws. My theory is whoever made this video released it only because they’d already paid for it and were hoping that any publicity for us is bad publicity.”
“That’s usually the safe bet.”

“Sadly, yes,” Lewis said with a sigh. “It usually is. But this time someone overreached, and with any luck, we’ll make this person pay for the mistake.”

“I hope so.”

“We may need you to speak with one of our investigators in the next few days. It depends on what we find out in the short term. For now I’m going to ask you to lay low. Do not engage with any members of the media in any way. We expect you to be inundated with interview requests as soon as the media discovers your identity. Practice saying the words ‘no comment’ because those two words will become your best friends for at least the next week. Refer all interview requests to our media department but don’t worry, you won’t be doing any interviews. Can you handle that?”

“Yes, sir. Not talking to the media? I think I can do that.”

“Thank you, Douglas. I know you’re scheduled to be out in the field tomorrow, but instead you and Abe will be coming into the office. We’re going to assess the situation overnight and decide tomorrow if it does more harm than good to have you making house calls while this is still an issue in the media.”

He thanked me again and then ended the phone call. I channel-surfed until I found someone just starting the story again and this time I watched the entire video without commentary. Whoever was responsible had access to some good equipment, because the video and accompanying audio were very clear. It ended abruptly after I started speaking and Adam, or whatever his real name was, stormed out. I thought I looked bad, like a heartless jerk who didn’t care how badly this boy was hurting over the loss of his mother. Now that I knew it was all fake, I thought I should’ve felt better, but still, my reaction was to the reality of the situation as it happened, not what it turned into. And anyone watching would understand that and probably agree that I was a heartless jerk. Unless I found a woman looking for a heartless jerk, I’d probably remain date-free for the foreseeable future.

Why, yes, when you put it that way, there probably are better ways I could be spending my November. Like lobbying the Nielsen ratings people to allow me into the family. Let’s hear it for first drafts. Woo hoo!

More later. Gotta make a big push on this and try to get out ahead again before the holiday.