Thursday, November 20, 2008

Leaves Dancing in the Wind



What a great time of year! The first thing I really noticed this morning, aside from my annoyance at my alarm, was just how strongly the wind was blowing. On my drive downtown for work, particularly north of 2100 S., I was enthralled by the number of leaves on the road, and how they were dancing in the wind. It lent almost a mystical quality to the morning, on a day I know I'm in desperate need of any such help I can get. It's pretty busy at work, and the first order of business was a meeting regarding recognition of child abuse. Not the type of meeting that anyone particularly enjoys sitting through, but a necessary one for employees at a children's museum.

I'm doing Nanowrimo this year. I know that I'm not going to be able to finish the full 50,000 words, but I'm going to make a serious effort to tack on another couple thousand words tonight. Here's an excerpt, if anyone's interested:

"She soon lost herself amidst financial documents and order forms, wandering through them as a fairy would drift through an enchanted woodland. She flitted through meadows filled with catalogues of children’s novels, weaved through the stands of music and art literature, forged through rivers of nature and science reference works, and finally fought her way through those venerated tomes of knowledge that bore the history of everything from the United States of America to the creation of string cheese. She had stopped to gaze into a small pond claiming to know the answer of the difference between Canadian bacon and Danish ham (apparently it was the sound the pig made, the Canadian one going “oink, ay”) when a knock came to her door."

The "she" is Sally Bradford, my protagonist (main character), who works at a book store. The whole canadian bacon/danish ham thing was inspired by a conversation at Litza's Pizza with some great coworkers.