NaNoWriMo Update #5 - The Pale Horse
I think I tried participating in National Novel Writing Month years ago and failed spectacularly. Like… two days in and I gave up levels of spectacularly. I don’t even remember what project I was working on at the time (a fantasy epic, probably?). I’m sure the notes are out there on an external hard drive or cloud storage somewhere.
Anyway, NaNoWriMo22. It was an awesome experience. I’m not the most organized or disciplined person on the best of days, but the NaNoWriMo dashboard made it very easy to keep track of what I was doing. Plus they also had a bunch of sweet virtual medals that I could unlock simply by writing (gamifying a process works on me very well). I managed to collect most of the medals, only missing out on the Daily Par badge, which required writing 1,667 words every single day in November. Sadly I had more than one lame duck day where I was lucky to get 200-300 words written down.
They’re like Pokémon Gym Badges, but for writing!
Overall, it was an awesome experience and I can’t wait for next November to do it all again. Hopefully this time I’ll be working on a brand new project, as Locke’s story should come to a close by then!.
As always, I’ll leave you with an excerpt - this one involving a friendly conversation between Locke and his companions as they continue traveling north.
The shrill blast of the steam whistle cut through the air and the carriage lurched forward as the train began to move forward along its tracks.
“No one ever does,” Enos said easily, placing his hands behind his head. “But it’s good to be prepared. Now if you folks don’t mind keeping an eye out, I’ve got to shut down for a little. Getting overheated.”
“You have been doing that more often, Enos Turing,” Ada said, suspicious.
Enos replicated an exaggerated sigh. “I didn’t want to upset anyone, but I’ve been suffering from some performance issues. Without the base below Paradiso, I don’t have access to a lot of the tools I need to keep operating at one hundred percent. Guess the last seventy-five-odd years are catching up with me.”
Locke leaned forward. “Is it mechanical or something inside… like a computer problem?”
Enos waved away his companions’ concern. “Just wear-and-tear and some poorly optimized code finally coming back to bite me in the ass. But don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll probably still outlive all of you.”
He looked directly at Locke.
“Well maybe not you,” he said with a laugh.
“What’s that mean?” Locke asked.
“Well ain’t you immortal or something?” Enos asked.
“I don’t know, it’s a little soon to tell,” Locke said. “I’m pretty sure I’m still on the southern end of thirty.”
“You do not know how old you are, John Locke Flynnt?” Ada asked.
“No, turns out wandering about in the wasteland fighting for your life tends to distract a man,” Locke said. “I’m probably twenty eight or twenty nine. Why, how old are you?”
“I will see the beginning of my thirty-first year when the winter ends,” the Decipher woman said, a hint of smugness in her tone.
“Twenty,” Two Sun said, pulling himself away from the world passing by on the other side of the window.
“Shit, when did that happen? You were nineteen when we fought those mutants in Goodtowne,” Locke said. “I missed your birthday!”
