November 1

Well, National Novel Writing Month is off and running. I got up early -- well, not really early because fall back and all that -- and went to the gym, put in an hour on the treadmill, came home, showered, finished the cup of coffee I had started at breakfast and hit the keyboard. I am happy to report that this morning I wrote a bit over 3,000 words. The goal is 1,667 words per day, which puts me off to a good start. I may actually get a bit more done this afternoon while Tom is escaping into NASCAR.

I thought I might share a sliver of my writing with you each day by posting the last few lines that I wrote that day. To set it up, here is the sketchy synopsis of the novel idea as posted on NaNoWriMo's site:

[Except for His Wings] is a surreal (not fantasy or sci-fi) novel set in a small town in the Texas hill country. A middle-school-aged boy with wings shows up at a park. He arrives from nowhere, flies away to an unknown location each day. The small community is thrown into turmoil. The narrator is the father of a girl who is fascinated by the winged boy. Narrator is an alcoholic in the first months of recovery, whose wife had abandoned him and their two children. Story revolves around efforts by different groups to use the winged boy to suit their own agendas.

Where I finished writing this morning, the narrator is speculating about his AA sponsor's beliefs:

At any rate, maybe WhatEver or WhomEver Wayne believed in was the kind of What or Who that made believing in boys with wings an easy thing. Maybe like that character in Alice in Wonderland who believed six impossible things every day before breakfast.

On another note, November is not only about drafting novels, it is also Movember, an annual event involving the growing of mustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men's health issues, such as depression in men, prostate cancer and other male cancers, and associated charities. I must confess that it is easier for me to draft a 50,000-word novel than to grow a respectable, or even visible, mustache. I do want to acknowledge this educational and fundraising effort, though. The mustaches may be fun, but the issues are serious.