Earlier this week I got this scene stuck in my head. I don’t know where it came from or why it hung around so long, but it kept playing over and over in my head until it became way more distracting than it’s worth. That happens every now that then. Lots of times a scene will show up from out of nowhere, with no warning, and after a little while if I ignore it, it goes away. But then there are the rare cases when the scene won’t go away no matter how hard I ignore it. Those scenes dig in and force me to pay attention to them. The only thing to do when that happens is to type the scene out and move on.

This particular scene really has nothing to do with anything I’m trying to work on now. Doesn’t really have anything to do with anything I was thinking of working on in the future. It just showed up and didn’t want to leave. So I typed it up. And since Molly asked so nicely, I’m gonna post it here. Maybe it’ll make some sense to somebody. It’s first draft writing, banged out in one late night and one evening. Not the kind of thing I’d normally share with the world. But I don’t know that I’ll ever use it for anything, so I might as well share…

George climbed the stairs on the side of the building and found the room in the back, overlooking the parking lot. The door was open. He couldn’t see anything inside from out here on the narrow concrete walkway, but he could hear Glen Campbell wailing about the pitfalls of being a Rhinestone Cowboy from a tinny radio speaker somewhere inside. He looked this way and that, peeked down at the parking lot one last time to make sure he was alone, and entered the dark room.

There were two beds. The one closer to the door was still made and the top blanket looked relatively clean and pressed for a motel of this caliber. The farther bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets, with an open suitcase balanced at the foot and a lanky man in boxers and a t-shirt sprawled across the rest of it. His name was Kyle and he looked up at George and lifted a hand in a lazy greeting. His other hand clutched a can of beer that was a close relative to the short lineup of empties on the dresser.

“Aloha,” he said before taking a drink.

“Why’s the door open?”

“Air’s busted. Gets too hot with the door closed.”

“Why don’t you call downstairs to get it fixed?”

“Why don’t you stop assuming I didn’t think of that already? They’re sending someone up.”

George shrugged off the backpack he’d been wearing and dropped it in the center of the made bed. “There any more of those?” he asked, gesturing toward the beer can in hand.

“In the bag,” came the reply, along with a nod at the small round table pressed hard up to the dresser. It held a paper bag with the top folded over, plus a Styrofoam container, a pile of napkins, and a couple of squat cardboard cups with lids on them.

“There’s ribs in that box,” Kyle said. “You can have ‘em if you want. They’re too spicy for me.”

“Where they from?”

“That place down the road. The one that’s open all night?”

George flipped open the top of the Styrofoam container and snatched up a rib, thick and meaty and glistening with a thick red sauce. He took a bite and the heat of a thousand peppers seared his tongue and nearly tore his head off his body. The heat flared, then subsided into a low, nagging pain. Whoever had created this sauce was a genius.

“Good stuff,” George said as he used his free hand to pull a beer from the paper bag.

“I like food that’s a little spicy,” Kyle said. “But usually I order something hot and you can barely taste anything. So I ordered the super hot or whatever the hell they call it. And I think that shit melted my fillings.”

“Look at you, outthought by a pit boss in some two-bit fast food joint.” George gnawed the rest of the meat from the bone and then deposited the bone in the small trashcan by the door. He snagged another rib before he took a seat on the edge of the empty bed.

“Where’s the rest of them?” he asked.

“Room on the other side of the place,” Kyle said. “They’re too loud.”

George nodded as he popped the top of his beer can. He gulped the contents of the can. It was still cold, but well on its way to lukewarm. George wouldn’t be able to drink another if he waited too much longer. He finished his first beer and second rib in a few moments, then mashed paper napkins between his sodden fingers to clean them. Once all remnants of the barbecue sauce were gone, he grabbed a second can and returned to his perch on the bed.

“You bring it?” he asked.

In response, Kyle sat up, reached into his open suitcase, and retrieved a small packet wrapped in a dirty towel. He tossed it across the gap between the two beds. It landed beside George with a thud. George drained half of his second can before he hefted the packet, testing its weight. It was heavy and solid, and the towel it was wrapped in smelled of old dust and mildew. He unfolded it, flipped it over and unfolded it again to reveal a dark hunk of metal. A revolver, .38 by the looks of it. The metal was dull and lifeless. George slipped a hand underneath it and lifted it from its nest in the towel.

“What the hell is this?”

“My uncle’s service revolver,” Kyle said, his tone somewhat defensive. “He was a cop once.”

“Once in the 1800s?”

“You asked for a gun. That’s the only one I could find.”

George turned his hand to view the weapon from every angle. It looked exactly like something that had been cared for once, long ago, then forgotten and neglected for more years than anyone cared to remember. It would have to do.

He flipped it to the side and snapped it open. The cylinder popped out and he eyed it to confirm his first impression that there were no bullets.

“You bring any ammo?”

“Couldn’t find any,” Kyle said. “We’re gonna have to buy some.”

“Gonna have to buy a kit to clean this fucking thing too,” George said. “Where’d you find it?”

“In the attic, in some old boxes. I didn’t even know it was there. Good thing I found it now, before my kid went poking around up in there.”

“You have a kid? Since when?”

“Since always. He just turned five last month.”

“Shit, I don’t think I knew that,” George said. He turned the gun around and looked up the barrel. “No worries about your kid hurting himself with this thing. Even if he could find a bullet for it, it’s so damn dirty it’s not gonna shoot anything. He’d be in more danger if he dropped it on his foot.”

He thought he saw something clogging the barrel, so he held the gun over the towel, pointed it downward, and tapped against the side. After three taps, some dark flakes fell out, along with the tiny, dried and shriveled body of a brown spider. George barked a laugh.

“Was your uncle Barney Fife or something? Did he ever use this thing?”

“My uncle’s dead twenty years,” Kyle said. “Gun’s probably been in that box at least twenty-five.”

“After I clean it we’re gonna have to shoot it. You know anyplace we can do that?”

“I thought we were bringing the gun for show,” Kyle said. “You never said we were gonna use it.”

“Probably we won’t. But if you’re bringing a gun, you’ve gotta be ready to use it.”

“And you’re ready to use it?”

“Right now I think I’m more ready than the gun is.”

“You ever shoot a gun before?” Kyle asked.

“Plenty of times. More rifles than handguns, to be honest. But I’ve shot guns like this before, over the years.”

“Ever shoot one at somebody?”

George leveled him a look that said there would be no forthcoming answer to that question.

“You know a place we can shoot this thing?” he asked again.

“Down by the river, probably,” Kyle said. “Go down there right after sundown and it’s not real crowded. Quiet too, but not so quiet a couple of shots would send anyone running.”

“Sounds good enough.” George rewrapped the gun, along with the spider’s corpse, and slipped the packet into the drawer of the nightstand between the beds. “I wanna meet the others. Introduce me.”

“They’re in room 211, around the front of the building,” Kyle said. “Introduce yourself. Don’t be shy.”

George was going to argue, but he was already tired of Kyle’s voice. He drained the second beer and added the empty can to the collection. Without another word he walked out of the room.

There were seven doors along this side of the building, then four more after George turned right, and then after three more doors following another right, he found the door to room 211. It was closed, like every other door except for Kyle’s. He could hear the TV from inside. He knocked.

A short, dark man with longish hair and a full beard cracked the door and peered out at George. He said nothing, and based on the small slice of his face visible through the space between door and frame, it looked unlikely that he was interested in speaking.

“¿Hablas Inglés?” George said.

A small shake of the head. “¿Habla usted español?”

George did, a little, but for now was going to play dumb. “No,” he said, with an emphatic headshake. A standoff, he thought. Mexican. How appropriate. He smiled.

The door was pulled open from inside and another man was revealed behind the first one. He was older, the hair at his temples white, his skin dark and wrinkled from years of exposure to the elements. His dark eyes narrowed and he looked George up and down.

“You’re el Blanco?” he said.

“I guess so,” George said. “Kyle’s friend.”

The man waved him into the room and shut the door behind him. The room looked much like the one he’d left Kyle in, but there were four other men lounging on the beds or on the floor or basically anywhere a body could sit. Any space not filled by a body was covered in grocery bags, some stuffed with groceries and some already doing duty as garbage bags. The room smelled of sweat and beer and junk food. And George thought he smelled the faint aroma of marijuana too. This was how he imagined a dorm room might smell.

The man who answered the door pushed his way back to a spot in the edge of the bed and joined his compatriots in watching the TV. Wresting was on, from Mexico, and the picture was so fuzzy and static-filled that George couldn’t imagine how they could follow the action. That was their problem. They were content to ignore him for now and he was content to be ignored. George turned his attention back to the older man, obviously the boss of this crew.

“You have guns?” George asked.

The old man shook his head. “Kyle said no guns.”

George nodded. At least they could follow orders. Or lie to him convincingly. For now he’d assume that first one.

The man fished around in a paper sack on the dresser and produced a can, which he held out to George.

“¿Cerveza?”

George took the can, which felt colder than what Kyle had been drinking, and thanked him. He looked at the can and all the words on it were Spanish. While George could understand it a bit if he listened, and could mangle it a bit if he spoke it, he couldn’t read a word of the language. He drank anyway, and it wasn’t the worst beer he ever had.

“You been to the place yet?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “Yesterday. It’s like Kyle said. Should be easy.”

“It’ll be the first easy thing, then,” George said. “But here’s hoping.”

If I held my breath in the morning
would I wake up for a lifetime
Lose my job in this depression
well I don’t care ’cause I got your love

I squeaked in just under the wire this year, I’m not ashamed to admit. This year’s NaNoWriMo was a tough one. As I previously mentioned, I started the month more burned out than I realized, with barely the energy to come up with an idea in the first place. Then I fell behind after the first couple of days, and spent the rest of the month struggling to keep from falling even farther back. The job tossed me a couple of curveballs too (though not as bad as the ones they’d already tossed me in September and October), and I’ll admit I considered quitting a couple of times. Not too seriously, because nothing happened that really justified quitting, but it was an option I considered.

When you’re racing to finish a novel in a month, you will grasp at the thinnest of straws more than once. For me, the first set of straws was all about the plot. I didn’t have one, but I had some ideas. I started with a guy who gets fired from his job while the job keeps a dead guy on the books. I thought the dead guy might end up being more important to the story than he ended up being. He gets mentioned a lot, but, not surprisingly I guess, he doesn’t do much to advance the story.

For a little while I thought maybe the story would be about the fired guy and a friend of his giving up on the whole work thing and starting their own religion. That possibility gets mentioned several times, but becomes more something they plan to do after they finish doing whatever the hell the book is supposed to be about than something the book could actually be about. So that was no help. To get the whole religion thing started, I needed a character to suggest it, and for that I thought it would be easier to drag in a character I’ve used in a couple of other stories, since he’s been published before and has proven to be the type of character who would naturally be planning a religion as his next career move.

Since this character, Yank, besides being used in a couple of stories, is also one of the main characters of my previous(?) comic strip Greetings from Shokanaw, I thought he’d be a good source of comic relief. And maybe he was at first, but eventually he started turning from comic relief to the damn conscience of the story. I was too tired to stop him. As I followed the characters deeper into their plan to fight back against the inconveniences of unemployment, Yank became less punchline machine and more man with a point to make. I knew for sure I’d lost all control over him when this happened:

“You say you’re concerned about the people who work for you, but the first lie every employer tells himself is how much he cares about his employees,” Yank said. “It’s a lie they have to tell, and that they have to believe. They couldn’t get any real work done otherwise. Tell the lie, then believe the lie, and then you can go about your business. It’s how the world works. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

It was an important point to make in the story, and by that point Yank was the only one who could’ve made it, but comic relief? Hardly.

When this is over, over and through
And all them changes have come and passed
I want to meet you in the big sky country
Just want to prove mama, love can last

This book only got written because I got my upgraded copy of QuickOffice for the iPhone. No doubt my fellow commuters thought I was texting away like a 16-year-old girl every morning and every night. That actually would make more sense than what I was really doing. Who in their right mind writes a book on a cell phone during a crowded commute? Nobody in their right mind, I’ll tell you that. The bulk of the rest of it was written using Pages on the iPad. A small amount was written in Word on my MacBook, but rarely was I in the mood to sit in my office and type. Last year that’s where almost all the work got done. This year I’m so out of the habit of working in my home office, it was the last place I wanted to be after a long day at work.

And those long days at work, they were long. There probably weren’t as many of them as there were last year, but when they happened, they were like a punch in the face. There’s a reason for that, and I’m not going to explain it here today, but eventually I will. But basically, any time I got stuck with a long work day, besides having to do the work, I had to deal with the fact that it shouldn’t have been me stuck working late. That shouldn’t be my responsibility anymore. But it was, and it kept me from home a lot, so those long commutes became the place to write.

I think I would recommend the commute-writing for anyone who just wants to get into the rhythm of writing without having to think about it too much. Because if you try to think about it too much, I doubt you can get much done on a bus or a subway. When you’re sitting at home, at your desk, computer at the ready, you can afford to sit back and contemplate that next perfect word you’re about to release unto the world. When you’re jammed into a seat on the bus, half the time you’re typing to spite the situation you find yourself in. You’ll be damned if you’re gonna let your stupid commute to your stupid job keep you from getting something done. You’re a writer so goddammit, you’re gonna write. That’s how I did it. I’d sit down in the bus and within a minute I’d be banging out the next scene. Was it great stuff? No. But when you’re racing to 50K, nothing you write is great. The bus stuff was as good as the couch stuff. For what that’s worth.

And I’m not strong
And you’re not rich
And we’re not lost
Where we don’t live

For awhile I thought my main character was going to cheat on his girlfriend. Possibly with one of his coworkers. Maybe even with one of his girlfriend’s friends who was hanging around the story looking for trouble. No cheating ever happened. Stupid character had more integrity than I wanted him to. That happens sometimes. Possibly because the original plan for the book had him getting very little support from his girlfriend over his sudden unemployment, and ultimately that’s not how that part of the story worked out either. What’s the point in even trying to plan these things, even if the planning only happens a day or two before the writing, if nothing ever goes according to plan? WIsh I could answer that one for you.

So in the end I’m left with 51-or-so thousand words, and a story that turned out almost nothing like I planned. Par for the course, probably, if you’ve ever heard me discuss any of the other NoNoWriMo books I’ve written. As usual, I had some periods where I didn’t know what day it was, didn’t know when I was getting any sleep, didn’t know why the hell it was 2AM and I was still writing, didn’t know why I was bothering, and didn’t know if I was ever going to finish. Was it worth it? Not sure. But a couple of things happened at the end of the month to make me think maybe it was.

First off, the last couple of days of writing went better than they should have after the month leading up to them. It’s like some raw, creative part of the brain finally shoved everything else aside and took over. Every scene that needed to be written to get to the end jumped out at exactly the right moment. It’s as if I finally found the proper amount of exhaustion, frustration and anger to fuel the last 10,000 words. And then there was the other creative project I had going on in November, though “going on” is way too charitable a way to refer to it.

We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds

You see, there was a December 1 deadline for a short story collection that I wanted to be in. The short stories had to be about people who worked in the courts, I had a big story about the courts, and figured all I had to do was edit out a piece of that story. I even knew what I wanted to use, and several months ago had pulled out 3 scenes that I thought I could edit together to submit. Then somehow I managed to blow several months’ worth of lead time and, if this submission was going to happen, would have to do this editing, and any rewriting, while working on the NaNoWriMo story. Somehow it took until well into November before I realized this was a bad idea. Then I read the submission guidelines again and convinced myself that the stuff I’d planned to use wouldn’t fit anyway, and gave up that idea.

Cut to November 29, when I remembered another part of the same story that might work. I ignored this revelation, because I was busy finishing the NaNoWriMo book. But the idea wouldn’t leave, and when I finished writing on the 30th, I was in such a creative frenzy I decided I’d see how much work it would take to Frankenstein something together out of this new idea. So I went back to this old courtroom story (coincidentally, my 2005 NaNoWriMo book), hacked out 3 pieces, put them together with just a little bit of new writing, and mailed that sucker out. This whole process took maybe an hour.

Do I think this story will get bought? Probably not. But I needed to feel like I was in the game somewhere, and this was my best chance. It was odd taking 5-year-old writing and stitching it together with new writing, because I think I’ve learned a couple of things in the last 5 years. I hope I have, anyway. But the insane creative part of my brain wanted to keep working, so I let it, and assuming the story gets rejected, I’ll post it to the Treetop Lounge eventually.

This last-minute frenzy taught me something, though. It taught me that if I take the time to work on something, crazy things happen that I wasn’t expecting. It also taught me that the stunts, like writing 50K words in a month, are fun but not enough. I need more. I need to be working on stuff that might lead somewhere. That might turn into something important. I know I can’t abandon the stunts completely, because that’s not in my nature, but I have to put in more time when there’s no stunt going on, because if I put in the time, I’ll get something good.

Previously, I’ve done this November mad rush and then sat back for weeks to rest from the abuse my brain took during the stunt. This time I’m trying something different. There’s a writing project with a February 1 deadline that I’ve wanted to try for a long time. Have tried, in fact, and failed. It’s time to take another crack at it, so this week my brain is gonna have to start being creative again because there’s another story that needs writing, and time is short. Unlike this blog post. Is it possible to write 50K words about a 50K-word story? If so, I may have just done it tonight. Damn.

T “if I’d stuck to Twitter this post wouldn’t have gotten so long” green

And I know that it’s been hard
And it’s been a long time coming
Don’t give up on me
I’m about to come alive

So after spending a month lost in a writing frenzy, all I had to show for it was a pile of words that may or may not have all fit together and a little picture I added to a blog post to show that I “won”. And that was pretty much it, except for one other cool thing. I could also get a free copy of my book from CreateSpace. An actual, honest-to-God, you can hold it in your hands printed book. I got one one before, when I won NaNoWriMo 2005, and even though I won in 2006 too by writing more than 50,000 words, I never finished the story so I never got my book. This time around, since the free book offer was good until July 2, I figured I’d edit the book, make something presentable out of it, and then get a free copy of that. And so during the week after Christmas, when I was off from work, I went to Staples, got some paper and a binder, printed the whole mess out and set to editing.

Cut to June and I have a binder full of paper I haven’t even finished reading yet, much less started marking it up with red pen. Though honestly I think I’m gonna need a box of red pens to get through this one. But the point is, July 2 is roaring down the tracks, aimed straight at me, and I’ve got nothing but the same pile of words I had at the end of November. So this week I formatted them, slapped together a cover, and sent the whole thing to CreateSpace to turn it into a book. I finished that process tonight, so in a couple of weeks I’ll open my mailbox and find a 122-page pile of words that may or may not fit together, but at least they’ll look like something real. It should be cool, and I’m hoping that reading through this book will finally get me working on this story that at one point I’m sure I thought could turn into something decent. I’ll probably post a picture of the book when it shows up, and maybe I’ll post one of the 2005 book as well. For now, here’s a quick look at the artwork I submitted for the cover:

And you know what the scary part is? With one simple click of a button, I could have this thing on sale at Amazon.com tomorrow. I won’t, because it’s a steaming pile of bad words right now. But I could. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The thing is, now that I’ve spent all this time learning how to design and format a book, I feel like I should find something profitable to do with that knowledge. Hmmm, if only I had a backlog of material that could be slapped together into some kind of book. If I had something like that, like a bunch of emails and blog posts from the last 15 years, I could do something. If only.

So there’s this thing that goes on every November called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple — spend 30 days writing 50,000 words and at the end of the month you’ll have a completed novel on your hands. It might not be anything you’d ever want to show anyone else, but at least you can say you’ve written a novel, which is more than most people will ever say. So even as you read this, writers the world over are furiously banging out words in an effort to actually pull off this feat. And I’m one of them.

Yes, once again I’m attempting to start November with zero words and zero ideas, and end it with 50,000+ words and at least one idea. This isn’t my first time, either (that’s what she said). In 2004 I started my novel, worked on it for maybe 10 days or so, and then gave up, hoping to never speak of it again. In 2005, I tried again and this time I blew way past 50,000 words by the end of the month, and ended up finishing my novel on December 6th or so, with more than 80,000 words. The next year I also had more than 50,000 words by the end of the month, though I never actually finished that one. In 2007, I made a feeble attempt several days into the month, then gave up almost immediately before taking a job that would suck up most of my free time for the next two years. in 2008 I don’t think I even considered it for a moment.

And yet here I am, back for another try in 2009. I like the idea of this challenge because even though there’s no prize and you’re not competing against anyone else, it’s a good way to jolt the creative part of the brain into action. It comes down to a fight against yourself, the worst opponent of all, and what better feeling is there than to be able to face down all your self-doubt and fear and accomplish something that on first glance may seem simple, but on second glance actually seems pretty much impossible? Plus, even though writing is such a solitary thing, it’s nice to know that there are thousands of other idiots out there just like you who are kicking their brains into overdrive to get to their daily word count. It’s like I’m alone in this room fighting the good fight, but I’m not actually alone.

I don’t know how much my job, or my love of bad television, is going to try to screw up this plan. But I’m going to do what I can to write 2,000 or so words a day to win this thing. “Win”, of course, does not mean there’s any kind of prize at the end of this. Doesn’t matter. I want to win anyway. I’ll be posting regular updates in this blog, and maybe even excerpts. This may mean that Happy Friday takes a rest until I’m done. We’ll see how things go. I hope that somehow my updates can entertain you (at least in that regard Happy Friday sets the bar pretty low). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do.