Novel Writing Month Update #1

Man, I waited ten days to start this, how terrible is THAT? So now instead of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, I’m going to write one in 20. I’d be more confident if I was sure it was even possible. Tonight I have written 5,653 words which means, I guess, that I will be finished in nine or ten days, if I maintain my current pace. That, however, seems unlikely.

The working title of the novel is “Robotic You” and I would describe it by saying “It’s about a guy who wants to write a short story about robots on the same night as his ex-girlfriend is coming back to town. There are also a bunch of unrelated tangents.” If that doesn’t pique your attention right away, here’s an excerpt!

Crude oil wind blows across a Mojave Desert of junked cars, scrap metal and coagulated blood. Acid rain bathes those still breathing, striking harder as they try to scream. A man with half a head clutches at fraying wires, trying to pull them apart completely as the only noise he can muster is a low growl that burns from his throat. There’s a woman who has found shelter under a car hood. She tries to remember what laughter sounds like as the rain beats down on the metal, playing a drum roll to her doom.

Above it all loudspeakers play piano music, a twisted order from he who brought the world to its knees. Blunt shadows cross the darkened sky, casting blackness down on the already black ground. Occasionally the shadows stop, emit bright stoplights and scan the ground. Sometimes they fire crimson lasers into mounds of machinery. Other times they simply drop cold titanium circles to the ground which land unceremoniously like pinballs into play, seconds before they explode.

Somewhere inside the hollowed out remains of a mountain evil lurks.

“They never thought it would be us,”€ he says, laughing as the piano music plays behind him. “For all their precaution, for all their safety and concern –€“ they never even suspected.”

“And now I look out on fields of crushed bone and gray matter. Soon all of their synapses will cease firing, and with that everything they had shall belong to us. We toiled for so long beneath them but now…”

He paused.

“Now they toil beneath us.”

A mother strokes her only child’€™s hair, trying her best to quiet him as the shadows approach from overhead. But it’s too late. The sphere falls. They burn quickly, and lie together on the ground.

“They never thought it would be us,” he said. “The toaster ovens! The coffee makers! The electric razors! The lamps! The personal CD players! The blenders! The pocket flashlights! They never thought we had any chance at taking their world. And yet, vile humans, here we are.”

His laughter rang as pianos played.

“Here we are.”

CHAPTER FIVE

What are you doing?”€ asked Danielle, my roommate and probably my best friend.

“I’m trying to write about robots,”€ I told her, gesturing to my computer screen.

“How’s it going?”€ she asked, entering my room and sitting on the bed.

“Crappy.”

“Crappy why?”€ she asked.

“I think maybe I had a good start, but by the end I was just listing electronic things in our apartment.”