Woohoo! (Take Two!) I'm a winner!

Even though I haven't posted it here in awhile, I've still been doing the one-minute writer. Not every day, but whenever I see it in my blog roll and the topic catches my eye. Well on November 23, the prompt was, "Travel: What is the furthest you traveled from home as a child? Describe the experience." In one minute, I wrote:

When I was 13, I flew to Australia with a group of children my age. It was my first time on a plane, and the length of the flight alone left me shaking with nerves. But Australia itself was not that different from home; with the exception of the kangaroos, and the terrifying giant spiders. I thought they would eat my face as I slept.

Beth, the owner of one-minute writer, picked me as the one-minute writer of the day! Woot! She said she was amused by the "spider eating my face" bit. Amusing? Yes. Still true and terrifying? Absolutely. Spiders are creeptastic.

Thanks for picking me, Beth! And to all you writers out there: Beth has a great blog going on over there; if you're not following it, you should be! Prompts abound! I've even used some of the prompts as character studies (and posted them here multiple times; that's just one example), and some of those character studies ended up in my novel. You never know where your inspiration can come from.

One minute writer: robot

Today's prompt over at one-minute writer was robot. It's Friday Fiction, so she encourages you to write a bit of fiction (which is what I've pretty much been using her prompts for, anyway).

Apparently, I like sci-fi. Who knew? Not only did I write something (not from my NaNo character's POV, but something totally different), but I thought it was fun enough to enter into her one-minute writer contest of the day. I should note, here, that she encourages the Friday Fiction people to take a little longer than a minute. I think this took about five.

Enjoy!

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Marcus screwed the final bolt into place, grunting with the effort. He had to make sure it was tight. Last year, all the bolts had been too loose, and his robot had fallen apart as it moved past the judges’ table, leaving scraps of metal in its wake.

He had been busy in the workshop his mom had built him in the corner of the garage for weeks, perfecting his design. But today was the day of the fair, and he had to get it right. Beads of sweat formed at his brow, but he wiped them away with the edge of his shirt. Finally, he stood back to admire his handiwork.

“Almost finished?” his mom called from the doorway. She approached his messy pile of waste and tools, wading through the oily rags. “We’ve got to load you into the car if we’re going to make it down to the school on time."

“Just a sec, ma,” he replied. He flipped a small switch on the back of the robot, and a quiet hum exuded from the machine. With a lurch, the robot moved forward, one foot in front of the other. He watched it move a few steps, his heart soaring and his head dizzy with excitement. After a few seconds, he turned it off. He didn’t want to ruin his last chance.

As he washed his hands, his mom strapped the machine into the back of the car. They drove along the bumpy road toward the middle school, and with every pothole and dip in the road, Marcus’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. Finally, his mother pulled her red sedan into the loading zone outside the gym.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, carrying the robot through the crowd of students.

“It’s my year, ma. Tonight is my night.”

A prompt and a confession

As I type this, there might be someone in the country reading my novel.

O.M.G.

The other day, I mentioned that a few of the women on my book club board were going to critique the first 25 pages of my novel for me. I emailed it out to five people last night, so now I'm just waiting to hear back! I think it's better that these are people that I've never met, and that my only friendships/interactions with them are on the cyber level. That way, if they hate it, they don't have to look me in the eye knowing that they've destroyed my hopes and dreams. I'm hoping they'll be brutally honest and tear it to shreds, tell me it's awful, then help me pick up the tattered pieces and put it back together in a form that will be suitable enough to get me into the workshop.

Yesterday at my NaNo write-in, I also learned that one of the other women participating in NaNo has applied to the same workshop! It would be pretty cool if we both got in, since I would already know someone. She actually has published a book that will be coming out in a few weeks, so she falls into the more experienced authors category. I still definitely fall into the "amateur in desperate need of help and attention and a good ass-kicking."

And now, on to the writing! Today's prompt comes again from the fabulous One-Minute Writer. The word of the day over at oneword.com was headband, which I thought was pretty lame, plus I'm not sure they even have headbands in my book. So what I wrote was terrible. But my one-minute writer piece was pretty awesome. The prompt was skywriter: Imagine you hired a skywriter. What message will the plane write in the sky, and where will it fly? Here's what I came up with, in one minute.

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I would hire the plane to fly high over Satera, preferably right over the Council's headquarters. I would have them spell out all the treacheries that Brax has told me about, all the lies the Council has been force-feeding us our entire lives. And I would tell the people the truth about the mortality patrol. Then I would tell my mom I love her, because the regulators would surely be after me before the last whiff of smoke came out of the tailpipe.

I'm learning a lot about my characters!

Well, I'm past the 10,000 word mark! That's right, tonight I hit 10,290 words with my novel. Hooray! So far, some really surprising things have happened. I wrote a paragraph that I actually feel good about sharing (possibly tomorrow), and the best part is, it's happy! It happens after the main character's main problem is revealed, so I think the shock gets to her and everything is just a bit happy for awhile.

I also accidentally created a hilarious character who wasn't even in my original outline! She is pretty hilarious, and now that I'm done writing her scene I'm hoping that I can find a way to sneak her in later. She is just so clueless and dim-witted that she seems to be a nice respite from the rest of the characters in my dystopian, depressing universe.

Today's character studies are taken from a prompt from the one-minute writer blog. This is a great blog, similar to oneword.com in concept. But her prompts tend to be much more in-depth. For this prompt, I chose three characters: my main character, the character I mentioned above, and a character that I just introduced, who is going to become the most important secondary character and possibly a love interest (I haven't decided if I should stoop that low yet...but I probably will, because who doesn't enjoy a good love story?)

The prompt: What nervous habits do you have? I wrote one from each character's POV! Enjoy!

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I run my hands through my hair, and play with my zipper. I try not to show the world my emotions, but they always get the best of me. When I am feeling especially anxious, I’ll rub my fingers against the tag embedded into my arm.

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Nervous! Hm, let’s see…when I get nervous I…well, gosh, I don’t know! I suppose I tug at my hair, yes, and pace quite a bit! Ha! I must look like a loon when I get nervous! Sometimes I do get a bit jittery, but I don’t really think it’s nerves!

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Showing your emotions makes you weak. That is the first thing that we learn in Council training. Keep your eyes forward and your head trained back. And keep your gaze on the person you are speaking to. So when I feel anxious, it is all internalized. My stomach turns in knots and I feel a bit queasy, but I show no signs on my face or in my body language.