30 Days of NaNoWriMo: Day 8

Day 8: Today’s gem, which the calendar feels obliged to quantify, just in case the whole experience is really getting to you presumably…

Kill somebody! (in the story)

Target for the day, get to 13333 words
Current word count 6875 words

Literary murder aside, you know your getting somewhere when something a bit odd occurs to you and you write it down, but don’t notice what an odd thought it is till you are half way through writing it… Like this little gem when I found myself thinking about how despite the urban myth that says otherwise they don’t actually keep growing after you die…

He had never realised how much of a habit biting his fingernails had been the quick ceased to be quick and he’d bitten them down to nothing. He’d tried false nails for a while afterwards. Gluing them on, however, was something for which he had little penitence. Particularly as he knew he was only glueing them on so he could bite them off again. It just seemed pointless after a while. When they talk about the troubles of the undead lifestyle, he noted, they seldom mention you can no longer bite your nails…

Which is what I get for combining a weird thought and a major character who happens to be a zombie… BTW, if our interested, the reason hair and fingernails seem to grow when someone dies is because the skin dehydrates causing it to tighten back and so reveal more of the root and stem. Thus they appear to be growing, hence the myth… Also BTW, please don’t judge that paragraph, it is as raw as hell, this is the first draft, and written with some hast after all. I am just using it to illustrate a point. speaking of which…

My point here, which may seem a little odd, is that what I enjoy most about writing is the joy of invention. Those little sparks of inspiration that occur to you midstream. In this case, what does a zombie who used to bite his nails do when he dies and his nails stop growing… Or whats the strangest item of footwear that would ever become a trend among teenage girls … (Moon boots in case your wondering, platforms shoes with soles so soft they are like walking on blancmange, the desert, not the 80’s electropop duo…)

Or for that matter when the odd sentence gets away from you like this one:

The cut and thrust of the politics of the Elven court was quite often a literal cut and thrust, or at least a taciturn bit of bludgeoning at any rate…

Writing should not be all blood, sweat and fears… It should be entertaining, joyous, and downright fun. If it’s not, you may not be doing it right… Besides which I am reminded of a quote from Allen Ginsberg, which I have always kind of liked to remember when I feel I am taking myself too seriously…

Now as I am still a little behind with the word count, and ain’t quite ready to let a body hit the floor I am gonna ignore the calenders advice for now… The important things right now is that I am enjoying the journey, and sure in some hypothetical final edit, a lot of the madness may fall away. But right now it’s starting to be fun finding out exactly what going to slip through the medium of the keyboard next form the darker, and occasionally strange corners of my mind. Or to throw one last quote out at you, to sum up how I am feeling about the whole Nanowrimo experience right at this moment …