____________________

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“Okay.”

“There’s magazines on the table.”

“Exactly how long are you going to take?”

“Not long. I just feel bad my cable’s out. You could watch something.”

“Seriously, how long does it take to ‘finish getting ready’?”

“Five minutes. Tops.”

“I’ll be okay on my own for five minutes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. It’s no problem. Really.”

“There’s iced tea in the fridge.”

“I’m good. Go get ready.”

“Okay. Sorry. I’ll just be a minute.”

As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, Charlie threw himself to the carpet and squinted under the sofa. It was one of those old-fashioned-looking kinds that sat high off the ground on four wooden legs with no duster. Apart from his date’s cat cowering and hissing at him in the corner and an old issue of US Weekly (how was Jennifer Anniston always on the cover?), it was completely clear.

Though they could be under the cat.

“Good kitty,” Charlie said softly, carefully reaching out one hand toward the cat.

Its fur stood on end as it hissed and it took a swipe at him before darting out from under the couch and disappearing into the kitchen.

They weren’t under the cat.

Unperturbed, Charlie checked under the armchair and all the cushions in the room (there were a lot of them). Still no sign of them. Nor were they behind the television, in any of the drawers or cabinets on the entertainment center the television stood on, or buried in the potpourri that stood on a bowl on the coffee table.

That left the bookcase. Charlie began systematically pulling books and DVD cases out, replacing them when he saw there was nothing behind them. He had to work fast; he didn’t know how long Jessica was going to take before she deemed herself ‘ready.’

He started to feel anxious as he began on the last shelf. Maybe they weren’t here at all. Or maybe he had missed them.

His anxiety made him clumsy, and he dropped a handful of books with a loud thud. He cursed under his breath and dropped to his knees and scrambled to pick them up before Jessica came out to see what was going on. Then he spotted a pair of shiny white aglets peeking out from the pages of a book lying pages-down on the floor.

“That’s a weird place to keep shoelaces.”

He dropped the books again and uncovered the shoelaces carefully.

There was no doubt in his mind that these were the very shoelaces he had been searching for. The pure white weave radiated power so strongly he was afraid to touch them with his bare hands. He dug around in his pockets, begrudging the fact that it wasn’t a hundred years ago when all men carried handkerchiefs. He found only the keys to his car and apartment, his phone, his wallet (containing one driver’s license, one work ID, one credit card, one bank card, one expired gym card, two dollars and fifty-seven cents in change, no cash), and some lint.

He loosened the knot of his tie and pulled it over his head, making one end of his shirt collar stand up and poke at his jaw. He ignored this and closed the tie over the shoelaces, careful to keep from touching them directly. He squeezed them between his fingers and slowly stood, wondering why he hadn’t brought something to carry them in. He didn’t really want them sitting in his pocket all night–

“Keep the shoelaces where I can see them, Charlie, and nobody has to get hurt.”

Charlie winced and turned around slowly. Jessica was standing in the doorway of the living room looking gorgeous. Her dark hair ran in waves over one shoulder, her blue eyes standing out dramatically against dark eyeshadow. The black dress hugged her curves tightly. He hadn’t heard her coming, though he probably should have. She was wearing black strappy heels at least three inches tall that probably ought to have clicked on the linoleum floor of the hallway.

Most importantly, she was pointing a sleek, black gun right at his head.

“Ah, Jessica,” Charlie said lightly. “I was beginning to worry we would miss our dinner reservations.”

“I want you to put those things on the coffee table. Nice and slow.”

“I can’t do that, Jessica.”

“You have no idea how important those shoelaces are. How dangerous. Now put them down before someone gets hurt.”

“I know more about these shoelaces than you could ever hope to know.”

“Yeah? What are the words of power?”

Charlie didn’t know them. And even if he did, it would be stupid to utter them unless he was really going to use the shoelaces. “Well, obviously . . .” His mind went blank. Think of something clever, he told himself. Don’t let her know you don’t know them. “I don’t know them.” Well done, Charlie. This is why you never get promoted.

Jessica smirked. “Who are you working for, Charlie?”

“I’m with the FBI.”

“Liar.”

“Well, it’s a subdivision of the FBI. Well, not really, but we get most of the same clearance. Well, not really, but I have a contact or two in the FBI and, well, it’s really only one. Her name is Clarice, she’s about sixty and she’s a darling. She knit me a pair of socks last Christmas.”

“You’re babbling, Charlie.”

“I’m with ASBAHO.”

“You work for the American Security Bureau Against Harmful Objects?”

“Yes . . .”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying! My ASBAHO ID’s in my wallet!”

“But I work for ASBAHO,” Jessica said, lowering her gun. “Why’d they send you after me?”

“They sent me after the shoelaces,” Charlie said, waving them at her. “I tracked the shoelaces to you.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “ASBAHO is the worst at communicating of any job I’ve ever had. I found the shoelaces weeks ago, and I was going to take them in, but ASBAHO said they were going to send someone out to collect them.”

“What? Why didn’t they just give me your address?”

“Beats me. Hey, you want something to carry those in?”

“Yeah. Do you have a bag or something?”

“I’ll go get it. You might want to do something about your collar.”

“Oh, right. Thanks. We’d better get moving or we’re going to be late for dinner.”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

____________________

Sparked from the prompt: “Include this in a story: That’s a weird place to keep shoelaces.”

(c) 2011

First of all, I won NaNoWriMo, and I even won it two days ahead of schedule, so…Hooray for me!

And then I immediately reworked the plot of my long-term novel, edited the first three chapters of my dad’s novel, and began work on the newly-reworked novel. Because EVERYONE celebrates writing 50,000 words in a month by doing EVEN MORE writing, right? Guys? Right?

So now I’m about 12,000 words into this new novel and THIS SCENE IS TOTALLY KICKING MY BUTT. First everything went SUPER dramatic for no apparant reason so I deleted that section (1,500 words of it!) and tried to start again, but it still feels wrong for some reason and I don’t know why. I think it might be my MMC. I don’t really get why he’s being such a jerk all of a sudden. He’s supposed to be kind of nice. And I think he’s upset that I’m making him so mean.

This isn’t really even that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I have half a mind to take this plot line out entirely. I don’t even know why I’m so insistent on keeping it in. It’s kind of the reason I had to rework the plot in the first place. Well, in the second place…I’m on the third or forth reworking of the plot at this point.

I’m just hoping that making this less dramatic will help with the furtherance of the plot. Hear that, FMC? Stop being such a drama queen! >:[

I actually wrote some things I’m proud of. In the first draft. Of my extremely silly novel. Immediately after the chapter where the Doctor comes in and rescues them from jail for no other reason than to up the word count. Which is right after they meet a mayor who insists on balancing random objects on his head for NO REASON. And right after I named a diamond the Spork. This sequence I’m writing now is turning out SO MUCH BETTER than I had hoped. They’re all doing important things, a plot is coming together more or less on its own, I think I’m setting up for a plot twist that I have planned coming up. It’s actually going well. And you know what else? I think I might actually manage to finish the novel at around 50K, which was what I was planning to do this time around.

All this to say that yes, it’s true: if you can persevere through the self-proclaimed crap in your writing, you can make it through to something you’re proud of.

Keep on writing, wrimos!
45,385/50,000

This seriously has to be the messiest manuscript I’ve ever worked on. I did some mild forth-wall breaking last year, and I never (or not that I can remember) break the forth wall when I’m doing my usual writing. But I’m breaking the forth wall SO MUCH this year. It’s a little ridiculous. Like this example:

I don’t know anything about Charleston in the nineteen twenties, and it’s starting to freak me out, especially since I don’t relaly have a plot for this section of the novel. OH NOEZ. I guess they should deal with flappers or something. I’m not really sure. Maybe Quincy’s ancestor was a flapper who somehow did something destructive to her career/family something. Or there was a mob boss in the family and this is the time at which he decides whether or not to become the mob boss. Or maybe it was all about that farmer they just talked to whose name can’t continue to be Jingleheimer if that’s what’s going to happen. It just won’t work. JOHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER SHMIT LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAA.

Let’s go with the farmer thing. Sorry.

I think I need to start a new scene, I’m just running this poor book into the ground. :(

…I just used an emotiocon. In a book. *Facepalm*

GOOD LORD, WHERE’S THAT NEW SCENE?

Clearly I was having some trouble figuring out what was going on at this point. No joke, that is literally in the manuscript because I was so crazy from the headaches (or possibly from week 2 of NaNo…) and that was after a whole SEQUENCE of forth-wall breaking during the whole rest of that particular scene. It was really bad.

There is a plan to go see a movie tomorrow (Unstoppable) with my sister and friend who are both in LOVE with Chris Pine (I think he’s cute too, but they’re like “OMG CHRIS PINE YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! XDDDDDD” and I’m more like “oh hey, it’s Chris Pine, yay! :D”, which should be fun…so long as I can get rid of these pesky headaches which are making me crazy. ;_;

Word count: 22,003

EDIT:
I thought I would post the site I was looking at for 1920′s flapper info so I don’t have to search through my bookmarks all the time:

Fashion (photos) Fashion (drawings) Flapper (wikipedia)

However, I’ve had chronic headaches since Sunday which are driving me crazy. It was sooo difficult to get my word count in today. I kept having to tell myself that there was no way I’d be able to do two day’s worth of words tomorrow if I skipped today because I have a church thing in the evening that I have to be at at 6:30, and if I was going to be just as slow tomorrow as I am today (chronic = MORE HEADACHES TOMORROW. D:) then there was no way I’d have the pain resistance to get all those words out.

…I’m not even sure that made sense. That’s how wonky my brain has been.

Point is, I’ve met my word count for the day (18,344/50,000) and it was much more serious than yesterday’s contribution which was probably the worst day I’ve had thus far in terms of QUALITY.

Anyway, I’m going to get some sleep now and pray that my head doesn’t hurt so much tomorrow.

Goodnight.

Quick overview of the past week: Due to much driving, I fell behind in word count on Friday and Saturday, but I managed to catch up on Sunday before a migraine tried to beat me down (it didn’t succeed, but the medicine I took made me really loopy and dumb for the rest of the night and any writing I may have done after that would have probably been incomprehensible).

On Monday I took my little sister to the park because the weather was beautiful and we walked around and then wrote for a couple hours, and I exceeded my word count quota for the day and then we picked up some coffee and hot chocolate on the way home and I wrote a little more.

Then yesterday, I was feeling a little stupid again and kept forgetting the right words for things but didn’t want to stop to think of it, so I’d just describe it weirdly or use a couple of related words instead.

Random excerpt:

“Quincy, dude, you have to put things right again,” Ty said. “What happens in the past is in the past. There’s no reason to go and change it all.”

“You don’t understand,” Quincy said earnestly. “I’m changing it for the better. Things people did in the past that they’re ashamed of — I can stop wars from happening and keep people from invading other countries that don’t belong to them. I can help someone make a better decision for their family because I have something none of the rest of them do.”

“A time machine?” Josh asked flatly.

“No,” said Quincy, leaning forward and lowering his voice to a whisper. “I have perspective. Historical perspective.”

“What a load of bull smurf,” Shawna said. “Haven’t you ever heard that saying . . . What is it, Megs?”

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” Megan recited.

“Right. You’re making people forget the past, dude,” Shawna said.

Quincy shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong, girlie,” he said. He downed the rest of his coffee, picked up the last of his donut and stood up. “Well, this has been fun,” he said. “We should do it again sometime, I think not.”

“Wait!”

But Quincy had swept out of the store before they could manage to stop him.

Word count: 15,020/50,000
Number of time the forth wall has been broken: I’ve lost count, but I think it’s definitely more than 10 times

Anyway, my word-padding worked because I’m at just over 7K now. Which means I’m still ahead of the game! XD I’m also very pleased that the NaNo site is up and working quickly again. Well done, NaNo tech people.

When I wasn’t writing, we were busy having road trip adventures, which included playing Cows with Brianna (I think she ended up winning…we kind of lost track and we were really close in score the entire time), and spotting a doe walking along the side of the road nonchalantly.

But the most exciting thing, I think, was when it started to rain. My dad flipped on the windshield wipers and suddenly, with a loud bang the passenger side wiper flew off its holder thinger (I’m so technical and knowledgeable about cars) and flew away into the storm. So at the next promising-looking exit, we went in search of a Wal-Mart of auto parts store so we could replace the rouge wiper blade. We didn’t find either, but we did find a strip mall with a Publix, so we went in there. My dad was hoping that someone could point him to an auto parts place. As we drove past the other shops (restaurant, restaurant, restaurant, dentist, nail place…) we passed a gaming store that had a freaking statue of MARIO standing out in front of it. It was awesome, despite its being all of three feet tall. I didn’t spot it in time to take a picture, unfortunately, but it was still made of win.

Anyway, my dad found an auto parts place about a mile up the road with the help of someone inside and we went there and got a new wiper blade and put it on and it’s proved to be much more compliant than the last one.

As far as I can tell, the leaves still aren’t really any other color than green, which will hopefully change some once we get up closer to Atlanta. But we’re all happily wearing sweaters in the 50/60 degree weather because we’re from Florida and that’s dead-of-winter for us and we’re going to enjoy the awesome clothes while we can, dang it!

Word count: 7,097
Number of time the 4th wall has been broken: I think we’re up to about 6 now. *sigh*

Has anyone seen Scrivener’s new update? It’s pretty awesome. I’m still trying to figure everything out 100% and right now the site’s down (poor site), but it looks really good. The exporting feature is just amazing and it’s so pretty and shiny…I’m kind of in love with it. haha.

Also, it appears that I will be driving to Georgia tomorrow with my dad and little sister. SURPRISE ROAD TRIP. Very fitting for my novel, actually. haha.

RANDOM NANOISM:

“Okay, two answers. One: You’d be surprised what you can find on the internet.” By the way, this is the author speaking. I just wanted to say that Shawna could have spent her time in a much more plot-advancing way if, while she was on the internet earlier, she had done some research. So that’s now what she did. Okay, you can go back to what you were doing. Sorry to interrupt. “Two…”

Sometimes I make notes to myself because going back and fixing is not a part of the NaNo experience, but obviously I don’t want to forget. So I just shatter the forth wall instead. ;)

Word count:5,633/50,000
Number of times the 4th wall has been broken: 4 1/2

I was writing earlier while watching a fun not-scary horror movie from 1977 with my sister (it was supposed to be quite scary, but the effects were…well, they were from 1977, so they were not PARTICULARLY realistic), and I wasn’t really looking at the screen, so I imagine there are many nanoisms in that particular section. I can’t really bring myself to look at it right now, though, haha.

Also, since Toy Story 3 just came out, Emily and I stopped by Wal-Mart after choir practice (yay for Christmas choir!) and bought that on Blu-Ray (yay PS3!)…plus Shutter Island and V for Vendetta, which we purchased as a $13 DVD and a $15 Blu-Ray respectively. Only we can’t watch any of them (or How to Train Your Dragon, which we got on Friday) until at least Thursday because of Emily’s school schedule. We’ve also been trying to make time for Paranormal Activity and The Crazies neither of which we’ve ever seen before.

I can’t wait to get to the actual time-travel part of this story. It’s going to mostly be me making up random crap about history that is not at all true or accurate, but what do I care about accuracy? I’m trying to pound out a 50,000 word novel in a month. I’m not going to slow down the writing because of some silly thing like RESEARCH or REALISM.

Current word count: 4,315/50,000

Number of times the 4th wall has been broken: 1

Random excerpt from today — the opening scene!

Shawna Henderson — “Shawn” for short — looked her best friend Megan Makowski in the eye.
“Are you ready for this?” she said in a low voice.
“As ready as I’m ever likely to be,” Megan said seriously.
“Okay. Swear if you have to.”
“I won’t have to.”
“You might. Just say whatever comes into your head.”
“I won’t swear, Shawn.”
“Maybe. But if you feel like you need to.”
“I got it. Just — do it quick, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll count down from five.”
“Shawna. Do it.”
“Five. Four. Three —” Shawna yanked the wax strip away from her friends leg.
“Holy friggin’ mother of goats and cheese!” Megan yelled. “That hurt!”
“Next one?”
“No! Sweet Moses, I’d rather walk around with those stupid strips permanantly attatched to my legs than have to go through more pain like — ow!”
Shawna had ripped off another strip.
“For the love of cockatoos!” Megan said through gritted teeth. “Didn’t I just say stop? Get your hands away from my legs — Shingleton Road, Shawn! That bloody hurts!”
“You get really british when you’re in pain,” Shawna observed, wiggling the third strip in front of Megan’s face. “Only two left.”
“Why in the smurf did you convince me to put all of those things on at once?” Megan asked.
“Because I knew that if we did them one at a time —” she ripped of the next-to-last strip and Megan spouted a number of words beginning with the letter “F,” none of which were actual curse words, “— you would never have gotten past the first one.”
“So you were aware of how much these things were going to hurt,” Megan said accusingly.
“I had a general idea,” Shawna said. “Don’t you ever watch vlogbrothers?”
“When do they ever wax their legs?” Megan asked. “Ow!”
“And you’re done. Next leg?”
“No!”
“Thought not. Didn’t I say this was a bad idea?”
“No.”
“Well I thought it. John had to wax his chin once.”
“John who?”
“John Green. From vlogbrothers. Did you see that one?”
“No, I think that must have been before my time.”
“You should watch it. It’s hysterical.”
“You’re so sadistic.”
“Not that much. I didn’t laugh once when you were in pain, even though you said for the love of cockatoos, which is really just silly.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Swearing is dumb.”
“And saying ‘for the love of cockatoos’ is intelligent?”
“Shut up.”

My characters are totally nerdfighters. *dances around*

…okay, I think the lateness of the hour is making me loopy, so I shall bid thee goodnight.

Goodnight.

Or morning.

Whatever.