NaNoWriMo - November 1

This is National Novel Writing Month, and it's the first time that I've decided to participate.  I really have no idea on how to start - characters, plot outline, dialogue, setting - it's all a mystery to me.  But I decided if I wanted to participate, at the very least, I needed to write something every day – regardless of how many words it is.  So I decided to start writing here and then maybe post some of what I write in my blog site. 

I think I’ll just start by writing phrases and lines that I particularly enjoy, words that come rolling off the tongue pleasantly. 

She sells seashells by the seashore.  I love the ocean, the waves pounding on the sand and the sand susurring down as the water pulls it back into the ocean and then pushes it back up yet again, rhythmically.  Rocking gently through the day and night, crashing through the storms and rains, the ocean has its own emotions and feelings that it demonstrates in its tides and waves.  One minute it can be calm and collected; the next it is storming and roiling in sound and fury. 

I love the forest.  Even though they both possess groves of trees, wild forests are filled with sounds that usually go unnoticed in big-city parks.  The wind rustling the leaves, branches creaking, a bird piping here and there.  In good weather, the shade dapples the ground, alternating with the sunny patches here and there.  It seems as though the trees sway gently in their own unpredictable patterns – never quite in synch with one another but making a rhythm of their very own. 

The desert is quiet almost all the time, except for when the wind blows.  The cacti stand at attention, and the sun beats down on the crusted earth.  Here and there might be the slip-sliding trace of a sidewinder or the scuttled clots thrown up by a scorpion.  Overhead the vultures glide in long, winding loops, barely moving their wings yet able to hang for hours seemingly without moving a feather.  Once in awhile, the thunder rumbles and heavy clouds hang low just before they dump their heavy load onto the earth and the water runs across the land in sheets, barely sinking into the hardened earth, just drifting across the land in little rivulets that eventually gather into long streams that rush across and threaten to drown the standing pillars of cacti. 

The Great Salt Lake is a dead ocean in the middle of nowhere, and it smells as though it has been rotting there in the middle of the nation for millennia.  The water is saltier even than the ocean, and it burns and itches against your skin.  Swimming is easy because you have to force yourself to sink, and your very spirit rebels against putting your head deeper underneath that unnatural liquid.  If by chance you accidentally swallow some of the water, you gasp and choke, and the tears you shed are not half as bitter as your stomach. 

There, my task for the evening is done.  I have typed over 500 words.  That must be enough for the first day of NaNoWriMo.  I will try something a little different tomorrow.  I must read up on Jim Butcher’s advice on writing.