My Internal NaNo Dialogue

Anyone that is interested in seeing the method behind the madness.  This is literally what I think about while I'm writing, specifically my NaNo project (for which I did go off of an old story, but I completely revamped, rearranged, and changed the whole thing).

Hey - what are you doing here?  I didn't recall giving your character more than two lines originally.  What are you doing in the shop?  Now my main character has to interact with you?  Is it going to be embarrassment or further proof that my MC isn't, in fact, crazy?  Regardless, you are hindering my whole plot by being here, but fine, I'll go with it.  Yay conversations.  Are you don't yet?  Awkwardly shuffle out the door - that's better!  Main plot line, GO!

Okay, so this is actually coming together, it's actually making sense - but that conversation between the two of them seemed a little too heartfelt.  Then again, who am I to say that?  They've been dating in high school puppy love for about a year and a half - so naturally, yes, they are going to be a little heartfelt, right?  Hopefully?  But now what?  They had this awesome conversation that reconnected them, but they aren't supposed to be reconnecting!  If anything, he's supposed to be turning villainous and vapid.  Then again, his concern could grow more now, making him slightly more... protective?  Overbearing protectiveness to the point of driving my MC crazy is now a GO!  Success, gold star, now let's wrap this up so I can get some coffee/tea/wine.

I guess it is good that some things happen that are very unplanned.  It makes for more realistic situations, I think, and keeps me on my toes.  When I feel like things are getting too easy for my MC, something else comes in to make things a little.. different.  Even if they don't change dramatically, it is the little things that make a story come to life.

Today, I am a...

Let’s play a game.  The inner monologue begins at the start of the day, something to end the endless tasks ahead.  So let’s play a game.  Data entry is no longer just data, no, it’s now a secret code to a safe that contains a bomb.  If I get it wrong, the bomb explodes, if I get it right, then I move onto the next secret code.  I listen, watch the numbers, convincing myself that they could change at any time.  I actually get the slightest big nervous as my fingers stroke the wrong key.  “Shoot!  Game over!”  Oh wait, I’m not actually part of a bomb squad… okay, backspace, enter the number “4” correctly this time.

Entering names and updating lists is really just me doing my job – my job of updating the most wanted list.  And oh!  There goes the guy on the street down below my office window.  Quick, someone run and grab him, tackle him!  He’s the most wanted… erm… CEO of a major corporation who has done nothing wrong.  Right, never mind, I’m not some cop searching for the predators of our streets. 

When I enter our galley kitchenette, I’m really going into a giant pantry, with millions of possibilities of things to cook.  I’m a gourmet chef, serving something amazing from our miraculous, deep cabinetry.  I open one cabinet, open another, open another, step back and wonder – what can I make today?  What delicious meal can I serve myself?  I close all the cabinets because they are full of bitter, high fiber, low calorie food and snag some pretzels out of the giant, plastic bin.  Munch, munch, yes, this is my gourmet lunch.

When I take my plant to water it, I’m really in a lush garden with green vines growing so high up the sides of the fence that you cannot even see any connection to the outside world.  This fern is a gateway to a land of butterflies, squirrels, and endless rows of flowers and fresh vegetables.  I dig my fingers into the dirt, get the warm earth underneath my fingernails and play with the grains on my skin.

Let’s play a game – where imagination can take you everywhere you want to be and no where that you are.  The sun is setting somewhere, over a lakefront, with someone lazing in a boat, a line dipping into the water with no intention on catching any fish.  This is me, it’s my boat, and my lake, and my house is a short paddle away.  I bask in the last of the sunlight for the day and breathe the fresh air deeply into my lungs.  This is my life. 

The clock ticks lazily over to 4:45pm and I gather my things out of the receptionist area, walk out the front door, jump onto my scooter and rocket myself in between cars – getting home as fast as I can.  Right now, I’m a motocross driver, and I’m winning the race.

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What are you today?  Because today, I'm really an uninspired receptionist, with a new, dashingly good haircut.  And I feel pretty good.

The Hunt

The smell…  here?  Is it here?  No… Where?  Smell it.  Breathe.  Grunt, move forward.  Legs stiff, arms jittery.  Was it like this… always?  Smell, right.  Go right.  Right foot.  Left foot.  Go, move, smell it.  Breathe.  The twitching came first.  Eyes rolling, all fuzzy.  Then, just the smell, overwhelming, powerful.  Must follow.  Must find.  Must eat.

Don’t remember before smell.  Before hunger.  Only dark.  Some shadows, blurry faces.  Some thoughts.  Remember feelings, but don’t.  Where they go?  The smell.  Overpowers else.  Right foot, left foot.  Don’t remember walking.  Hard, everything sticks.  Cells broken, unsent messages.  Right foot, left foot.  Follow smell.  Ahead, further, hungry.  Push, thud, drag, push.  Ahead.  See?  Eyes fuzzy.  Arms raise.  Right foot, left foot.  Smell, food, hunger, hungry.  Need, want.  Desire.  Eyes focus.  Smell.  Silhouette.  Walking food.  No, running food.  Smell fainter.  Food running.  Eyes unfocus.  Cannot see.  Smell goes.  Hunger.

Sigh, if can.  Unsure.  One feeling, no, two feelings.  Hunger, emptiness.  Almost like, remember, sorrow.  Disappointment.  Remember, one moment, confusion, lost.  Realize change.  Realize hunger.  Hunger for people, walk for hunger, live for hunger.  Remember bite, biting, ripping.  Remember family.  Eyes blurrier.  Wet face, hot face.  Smell, my smell.  My smell spilling out.  Fading, blackness.  My smell on pavement, shattered, broken, like one memory.

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This is dedicated to my sister - she gave me the idea, sort of.  Anyway, she told me to write about the zombie Apocalypse, and I feel like that's overdone... and that I probably couldn't write it as well as I would want to - either that or I would find my inner Palahniuk and write so graphically that I make people vomit.  You know, either way.  Tomorrow I'll be posting from the other perspective, of the "running food."

Do It Justice

Am I the only one here that remains stuck?  Doesn’t see it as others do?  Cannot comprehend what others are going through?  When it happened to me, to my family, it wasn’t the end of the world, just a changed world – a different place.  Though, I’m sure it’s different for some people, since there are many drastically different ways of this happening.  But yet, here I am, trying to find words to explain how I feel, or rather, how I should feel, but nothing comes to mind.  I’m stuck in awkwardness, and the line in front of me is slowly getting shorter.  I gulp down my own saliva and flatten my wet palms against my pants.  I think I’m more nervous than they are sad.

I breathe deeply to try to calm myself.  I play words over and over in my head, but nothing feels right, it all feels fake, forced.  Am I really sorry?  I’m sorry that they are feeling sad, but you can’t say that – you can’t say “Sorry you’re upset,” that sounds horrible.  Why did I come here in the first place?  To be respectful?  Show that I care?  The words that will come out of my mouth will show me for who I am, a fake, a fraud, a cheat.  I want someone to come pull me out of line, snag me and say “Have some water, you look like you’re going to pass out,” but there’s no hope for that. 

I think it has gotten ten degrees hotter since I’ve been standing in line.  The humidity is so thick that I can barely breathe.  I’m next, oh crap, what do I say?  How do I tell them that I hope things get better, because of course they don’t think that’s going to happen, of course they don’t want to hear it.  No one really wants to hear it.  I shuffle my feet like everyone else in front of me did and bow my head towards the family members in front of me.  I hold out my clammy hand and say, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”  They reply with thank you and empty nods of heads, empty handshakes.  That didn’t help them at all. 

I shuffle away, wishing I had said something better, wishing I could let them know that they will be together again – this isn’t the end of the line.  Life is ongoing, it’s continuous, but no one can see it when it happens to them.  They can’t know that tomorrow will be the same, but different.  That the person is still around, their energy still floating, in a safe space that we cannot touch.  They still feel for us, and we still feel for them.  They are not gone, they are not lost, they are certainly not forgotten, never forgotten.  I’m sorry for your loss just doesn’t do it justice.

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I always feel so awkward at funerals or wakes.  I view death as a change of life, a next step, a different part - but I don't see it as a loss - and yes, when it happens really close to me, I'm sure I'll feel differently.  However, I like to believe it continues beyond what we can see.  So, I always feel weird, strange.  Even the one for my grandmother, I didn't feel a particular loss - which is horrible sounding, but I viewed it as her finally moving on, since her brain had already done such (Alzheimer's).  I saw it as a blessing for her, no longer having to live in the nightmare of her own mind.  She was scared half of the time, which is no way to live.  With that being said, I am sorry for my co-worker's loss, but I truly believe she's in a better place.  But I'm sorry for your loss just doesn't do it justice...

Picture of a Woman

Who was this woman?  I knew what to call her before, what to say a few months ago.  She was a loving wife, an aspiring photographer, a real estate agent, but really, most of all she was a mother.  She prided herself on that.  But this woman that stood before me was a shell of that, someone so convinced that her life was over that she was willing to give it all up.  This woman was spineless, she lacked motivation, she had fallen into the trap of being content.  Her eyes frozen on mine, hollow in the deepest meaning of the term.  No more green reflecting the world with glimmers of hope and fascination, it’s all replaced by anger and hatred towards her situation, towards what happened.

As the picture of her clouded over from the steam of the shower, I didn’t bother wiping it off again.  I didn’t want to see this woman, I didn’t want to admit that this was where I was.  Couldn’t I live in ignorant bliss?  But that’s the problem, when you know what you once had, you can’t live without it – at least, not as happy as you once were.  I knew what I had to do, but I had no idea what to tell him.  What do you say to a man?  How do you tell him you’re no longer in love with him?  That you were never in love with him?  How do you say, “You were just a means to an end for me – yes, I was using you, but I’m terribly sorry about it.”

But had I been using him?  That was the part I would never quite get, because it wasn’t true.  A part of me had fallen for this man, but he wasn’t mine.  And that was the difference, I supposed.  He never stood a chance against the man that I loved, no one did really – but why did it have to be him, of all the thousands of other people in the world that I could have taken solace in – why him?

I wanted to destroy the mirror, but instead, I walked into the shower for the third time today.  I watched my fingers turn to wet, hot prunes.  “I have something to tell you…  I have…  I have to tell you something…  I have to be honest, look…  I have…  Ugh.”  I concentrated on the water rushing down my face, dripping off my nose.  I had to convince myself, for the hundredth time this month, that it was all going to work out.  Somehow.  The impossible had already happened – so what’s one more “miracle?”

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This may, or may not, end up in my final piece for a longer work.  Haven't decided yet, but I wanted to get into her head again - so that I can continue writing her story.  Yes, it is ambiguous, but I don't want to give away too much about this novel until it is actually done.