The Fourth Grade Story: Chapter 1
R U READY FOR THIS NONSENSE?
(Me neither.)
Here is chapter 1, unedited except for footnote comments.
< Preamble
Chapter 1: The Beginning of Chaos
“So if you give me your aluminum cans, I will professionally flatten the aluminum for the canoe and then proceed to weld the parts together to form a double-plated body, a task essential but sadly overlooked by most canoe builders.”
I tried to look interested. Really. The only problem was that I had no idea what Carmel was talking about. I smiled, but inside I was saying, “what?”
Carmel must have noticed, because she looked my direction and said, “To put it plainly, Carla, it means I’ll stick the cans together to make a canoe.”
Oh.
Some kids collect baseball cards. Others collect stuffed animals. My sister, Carmel Fitzgerald, collects Coke cans. She’s a little on the crazy side. Today at lunch, she was trying to get the kids in the lunch room to hand over their cans from the school’s lunch.
“Remember,” she said to us, “the canoe race is three Saturdays from now, so make your contributions today!” She held out a plastic garbage bag.
Carmel is extremely smart, considering she’s only nine years old. She’s already taking high school classes when she should just be beginning third grade. But she’s not just smart—she’s a publicity hog. She’s kind of a mini-celebrity at our school and she enjoys it to the fullest. She likes the things she does to be uniquely her.
“Carmel, why do you want to make a canoe out of Coke cans, anyway?” I asked. “So you can win the award for the most creative canoe?”
“Precisely,” she answered. She then began a big speech about convincing the judges to listen to her. By now, I was beginning to feel just a little bit jealous. And why shouldn’t I? I was the only kid in school who wasn’t smarter than their younger sibling. Well, I was also the only kid in school with thirteen siblings.1
The youngest is Dulcie, a fiery six-year-old who always got her way. Jacob is seven and is obsessed with one of his toys. If anyone messes with it, he goes nuts. Morgan is probably the bossiest person in our family. He’s eight and he even bosses around our parents. He says he wants to be an astronomer, but he’d probably end up just bossing the universe around (“hey, you stars! You’re shining too brightly! Earth! You’re spinning too slowly! Go faster!” Things like that).
My brother Travis is nine, like Carmel. He and she despise one another, but Travis is usually pretty calm for the most part, except when he is forced out of doing something because of one of our other siblings. Carmel, like I said, is nine, and has the longest hair of anyone I know. It’s at least two and a half feet long, and Carmel is only three feet 11 inches tall, so you can imagine how it looks on her. I guess it has something to do with her being a genius. I’m ten and in fourth grade. I think I’m the peacekeeper in the family, since the only person I ever really fight with is Carmel. I like to sit back and watch the volcanoes erupt, if you know what I mean.
Now I come to the archenemies of the family: Helen and Mabel. They’re both eleven, both have short blond hair, are both stubborn, both loathe Carmel, and both want a lot of attention in the house. My mom insists that we try to solve our own problems, but still Mabel and Helen fight.
The identical twins, Craig and Ed, are twelve. They actually get along pretty well for brothers. Both are calm, but love to play pranks on people. Craig is much more creative than Ed, but Ed has all the facts, so they could probably write a book on pranking people if they wanted to.
Henry was born exactly one year before Craig and Ed, which makes him thirteen. He always wanted to be part of Craig and Ed’s duo, and they, surprisingly, seemed to have let him. The oldest, Adelle and Zach, are fifteen. Out of all of us, they seem to be the two who get along the best.
Well, that’s my family. Now back to school. Having ended her speech, Carmel was now holding her garbage bag open to anyone who would donate. Every time someone tossed a can in the bag, she’d say, “Thank you for your contribution. The canoe race is three Saturdays from now. Be sure to arrive at 8 AM sharp and look for the aluminum canoe!”
I sighed. It was going to be a long three weeks. Then the lunch bell rang and we had to struggle through English, math, and science before we got to go out to afternoon recess. Of course, there was Carmel again, campaigning for her cans. Most of my classmates were gathered around her.
The last hour of school passed in a blur and I walked home with Carmel.
“You know,” she said, chewing a gummy bear, “I bet with the right stamina and training, we really could win that award.” She threw another gummy bear up in the air and caught it in her mouth. “We might even win the ‘Most Creative Canoe’ award!”
We rounded the corner, and already I could hear the screams from a house that could be none other than ours. Walking up the front steps, Carmel stayed behind (probably to count the cans). The first thing that happened when I opened the door was that I was hit in the shoulder by a beanbag.
“Hey!” I shouted. I didn’t know who had thrown it, so I picked it up and chucked it at Travis. It hit him on the back and he started screaming. I stepped into the house and my foot came down into an orange origami box.
“Watch it!” said Helen.
“Sorry!” I made my way through Dulcie’s crayons, stepping on a few, passed Mabel’s model robot, accidentally knocking off its head, but finally made my way into my room and sat down on my bed. After a few minutes, I could hear noises from Carmel’s room through the wall, and it took me a second to realize that she was smashing cans for the canoe. I could also hear screaming still coming from Travis. Geez, I thought. I couldn’t have thrown the beanbag that hard. I got up from my bed, threw open my door, and marched into the hallway.
“Travis, I—” But it was not the beanbag he was screaming about. It was much, much worse. Dulcie, Jacob, Travis, Helen, Ed, and Craig were having a screaming contest. Henry was yelling at them to stop, Adelle was practicing for her choir recital, Mabel was practicing her drums, and Zach was rehearsing his death scene for the school play.
“Somebody help!” I yelled into the chaos. That’s when Carmel walked into the room. She had a pencil and a notepad in her hand and, despite her size, somehow managed to yell louder than all the other noise in the room.
“Alright, everybody!” she screamed. “Settle down! It’s time for me to give the assignments!”
Immediately, everyone stopped screaming, yelling, and practicing and gathered around Carmel. The reason everyone quieted down so quickly was because they all knew what the assignments were: they were for the canoe race.
I walked over to Dulcie and sat down beside her. She immediately started to bawl.
“Whaaaaa! Cawla bwoke my cwayons!”
But Jacob, who was in front of us, whirled around quickly and shushed her. “Shh!” he hissed. “I wanna hear my assignment!” Everyone else murmured in agreement, and Dulcie was quick to quiet her wails.
“Okay,” said Carmel, flipping the notepad to the first page. “Who wants to load the canoe into the truck and then position it in the water once we get to the river?” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “Adelle? Zack? Henry? I think you three should do it. You’re the oldest and strongest.”
They agreed. Carmel may be one of the youngest siblings in the family, but even the oldest kids would listen to her when she spoke.
“Alright,” she said, writing down the information. “Now I also need a look-out.” She looked up from the notepad to see if there were any volunteers. “You know,” she said, clarifying. “For the actual race? Someone to look out for upcoming obstacles as we weave down the river, to make sure we don’t crash.”
“Ooh!” said Helen, as if she’d just figured out what a look-out was. “Can I do it?”
“Sure,” replied Carmel. As she was writing this down, our dad came in through the front door and almost stumbled over the lot of us sitting on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t realize I was walking in on a conference!”
“No, daddy,” Dulcie said, crawling over to him and hugging his leg. “We were talking about beanut putter.” I have no idea what made her mention peanut butter, but she never could get those words right.
“Beanut putter?” asked Jacob.
“Yeah,” said Travis. “Like shace spips!”
“And bight lulbs,” said Helen.
“And sop picles!” shouted Mabel.
“Polored censils!” I contributed.
“Kurger Bing!”
“Plothes cin!”
“Flow snake!”2
We kept yelling louder and louder until Carmel got so frustrated with us that she stood on the couch and bellowed, “ranoe cace!!” This once again got our attention and made us calm down. “You guys,” she said, sounding disgusted. “If we keep goofing off like this, we’ll never get this race figured out.” She sighed. “By the way, Dulcie, where did you come up with peanut butter?”
Dulcie looked up at Carmel, then shrugged and muttered, “merlins.” That’s Dulcie-ese for “Martians,” which unfortunately got everyone going again.
“Martians!” yelled Travis, swinging back on his knees and hitting Mabel.
“Hey!” she said, shoving him. “Watch it, you gorilla!”
“Wait,” said Craig, running to the window. “Look! Martians! They’re outside! All different kinds and colors.”
“Are they green?” asked Jacob.
“Yeah!” replied Craig. “And red!”
“And blue?” asked Zach.
“Purple?”
“White!”
“Brown!”
“Turquoise!”
By this point, Carmel was so frustrated that she threw her arms up in the air, exclaimed, “I give up!” and ran to her room. Nobody seemed to notice she was gone. They just kept talking about colorful Martains and making up more words.
I went into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of gummy bears from the snack drawer, and sat at the table to eat them and think about Carmel’s plan. I thought that making an aluminum canoe was really not such a bad idea.
Around 5:00, our mom came home. Right as she walked through the door, she was hit with the usual flood of questions.
“Henry ate all the cookies,” said Zack. “Can you go get some more?”
“I have Girl Scouts tonight, but I can’t find my vest,” said Mabel. “Where is it?”
“Who took my Dynamo Dino?” yelled Jacob from the other room (his Dynamo Dino is a toy he got from our grandma last Christmas. It’s a little plastic stegosaurus with sunglasses, and orange shirt, and a Mohawk. When you press on its foot, it shoots water out of its mouth. He adores it).
“Guys,” my mom said with her infinite patience. “One at a time, one at a time. I’ll help everyone out. Just give me a minute to put my things down. Oh, and wash up for dinner.”
As she was speaking, Adelle, wrapped in a bath towel, came shuffling down the hall. It was clear that she had just gotten out of the shower.
“Alright,” she said angrily. “Where are my clothes?”
The twins and Henry burst out laughing, which only made Adelle angrier.
“Craig,” she cried. “Ed, Henry! I thought you guys were nice.” They kept laughing. “Okay,” said Adelle, clearly even more annoyed than she’d been a moment earlier. “Where did you hide them?”
They stopped laughing. Ed looked over at Henry, who looked over at Craig. Craig ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to look cool.
“Adelle,” he said in his smoothest “cool guy” voice. “We…um…sort of…I don’t know, uh…forgot where we hid them.”
“What!?” yelled Adelle. “I don’t believe it. You hid them yourself, didn’t you? How could you forget where they are?”
“Uh, actually, we got Travis to hide them,” said Craig. I looked over at Travis. So did Adelle.
“Um, I’ll go get ‘em,” Travis said. He ran outside.
“Oh well,” said Adelle, sighing. “I guess I’ll just find some different clothes.”
“Guys!” Mom’s voice came from the kitchen. “Dinner!”
Since our family was so big, our table was the size of a small swimming pool. The two people at the ends practically had to scream across the table if they wanted to hear one another. Once we were all seated, our mom came in carrying a plate with a slimy blob of browninsh-green stuff on it.
“I didn’t feel like cooking tonight,” she said as she set it on the table, “so I made some special casserole from a box.”3
“Yuck,” muttered Morgan.
“I’ll try it!” said Henry. He got himself a big spoonful of the gross-looking casserole and took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully. “Good!” was his conclusion. I figured his judgment was sound, so I scooped myself a bit of the casserole and tasted it. Yuck! It tasted like some sort of dead skunk!
Mabel must have shared my opinion, as she spit her bite out into a napkin and proclaimed, “it tastes like some sort of dead skunk!”
“I like it,” said Henry as he got another spoonful.
“Gross,” Travis proclaimed. He pushed his plate over to Carmel, who had finally emerged from her room for dinner.
“Ew!” she squealed. “Don’t put this revolting concoction in front of me!” she shoved the plate away. It hit Morgan’s glass of milk and a piece of casserole flew through the air and hit him right in the eye.
“Hey!” he yelled. When he thought no one was looking, he picked up his roll and hurled it towards Carmel. She ducked and the roll hit Travis in the ear.
“Ow! Hey!” And that’s how the food fight got into full swing. Helen picked up her roll and threw it at Zack. He dumped the contents of his water glass over Adelle, who picked up her entire piece of casserole and threw it at Henry. By then we were throwing food at anyone who was a good target. Even dad was in on the fight until mom re-entered the room from the kitchen and let out a scream that made us all freeze.
“Who started this?” she cried. Adelle looked at Zack. Zack looked at Henry, then glanced at Ed. Ed looked at Craig. Craig looked at Mabel. Mabel looked at Helen, who looked at me. I looked at Carmel.
“Morgan,” we all said in unison. Mom looked over at Morgan, who sank down in his chair.
“Well,” my mom said to him, sounding both annoyed and angry. “Do you know who’s going to clean all this up?”
He sank lower down into his chair. “You?” he asked timidly.
“No,” said mom.
“Dad?”
“No.”
“Adelle?”
“No!” yelled mom. “You!”
“What?!” said Morgan like he couldn’t believe it. “No way! I didn’t even start it! Carmel did!”
Carmel looked up. “What?” she said. “Are you suggesting that I would stoop to such extremes as to start a food fight?”
“Yes,” said Helen and Mabel in unison.
“Well,” Carmel huffed. “If everyone thinks so lowly of me, then I’m just going to go up to my room.” She got up, took her glass of water, and dumped it over Morgan’s head.
At 8:00, I went over to Carmel’s room and knocked on the door.
“Go away, Morgan,” she said. “If you’re here to terrorize me, I should let you know that I’ve armed my door. If you turn the doorknob even the slightest bit, you’ll meet your worst nightmare.”
I didn’t want to find out what that was, so I stood outside and said, “Carmel, it’s me, Carla.”
There was a pause. “Hold on.”
There was a click, a buzz, a thud, a crash, and then the door opened. “Hi,” she said.
I looked past her. There was a pile of gummy bears on her bed;4 she obviously was sorting them by color. She sat down next to them, took a yellow gummy bear, and bit off its foot.
“You know,” I said. “I didn’t think you started the food fight.”
“Yeah right.” She seemed to be in a trance with the wall.
“Morgan did,” I continued. “And the way he accused you was evil.”
A smile crossed Carmel’s face. “Morgan,” she said, sounding satisfied. She put the rest of the yellow gummy bear in her mouth, picked another one from the pile, threw it into the air, and caught it. She then looked at me, picked up yet another gummy from the pile, and threw it over to me.
“You can have as many of these as you want,” she said as I caught it.
I raised my eyebrows. If there was anything Carmel was exceptionally possessive about, it was her gummy bears. “Why?” I asked.
“Because you just defended me,” she said. “And because of that, you’ll be rewarded with much more than gummy bears later.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I was sure I’d soon find out.
____________________
1. I was heavily inspired by the size of Mallory Pike’s family in The Baby-Sitters Club books. And I think Carmel being a genius comes from Claudia Kishi’s sister, Janine, being a genius. Can you tell what my favorite book series was back then?
2. I remember thinking these were hilarious. I was clearly wrong.
3. That so totally still counts as cooking.
4. Was I pretentious enough to be using semicolons when I was in 4th grade? Apparently.
The Fourth Grade Story: A Preamble
Y’ALL READY TO SEE WHAT KIND OF GARBAGE YOU GET WHEN CLAUDIA CAN’T THINK OF A BLOG POST?????
Hi.
A while back, I promised that I would type up and post a story that I wrote back in 4th grade because nothing’s more embarrassing than having to read old crap that you wrote back when you thought you had talent, right?
And this blog is all about my embarrassing moments, right?
So.
Consider this the “preamble” post I guess.
Background: I don’t know where I got the inspiration for this stupid story, but I remember writing it in a purple journal back in 4th grade. It remains the longest thing I’ve ever written by hand (that is, not typed), which is kind of sad, but also kind of expected, as I learned to type in 7th grade and never looked back when it came to how I wrote up my stories.
I also never came up with a title for it, so I’m calling it “The Fourth Grade Story.” Which I guess is a little bit appropriate because the narrator is a fourth-grader.
Anyway, I’m going to post it chapter by chapter with no edits. Any misspellings, wrong words, terrible dialogue, awful plot…it’s all going to be in there. Just please remember this is something I wrote in FOURTH GRADE, so the quality is going to be absolutely horrible. I’d like to think I’m a better writer now than I was back then, but who knows, haha.
Stay tuned for the first chapter tomorrow!
OH, I’ll also put a list of links to each chapter here in case any of you are masochists and actually want to read this garbage.
BYE!
OH NO I’M BACK TO WRITING FAN FICTION
It’s not the 150,000-word monstrosity that my other main fic is, but it’s probably going to get there at some point.
Run away.
A Plan
Howdy, y’all!
(I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on here before, but if I have, I’m sorry.)
Back in 4th grade, I wrote a really horrible (quality horrible, not topic horrible) story in a spiral notebook. It was the longest thing I’d written by that point, and back in like 8th grade I transcribed it into a different notebook because 1) the original one was in pencil and was starting to fade and 2) my handwriting in 4th grade was terrible. I still have the 8th grade copy:
(It’s starting to fall apart now too, haha)
I was thinking of typing it up at some point, so my new plan is to type it up chapter by chapter and maybe put each chapter up here as I get them ready, sort of like a little serialization thing. It’ll be like Charles Dickens, except, you know, terrible.
That will also force me to get the damn thing typed up, at least.
DRAFT DONE
The next draft of my story is DONE!
I went through the previously completed draft and tightened things up a bit, making the tone a bit more consistent and fixing the timeline so that all the dates made sense. There are a few other things I want to mention/include/reiterate that will make things more cohesive and (hopefully) make the “meaning” of the whole thing make more sense, but I think I need to take another break from it so that I can re-read it with fresh eyes and see exactly what needs to be in there and what doesn’t.
WOO PROGRESS!
ALLO THERE
This is really interesting.
I can definitely see this in a lot of the books I read.
Got Lit?
Here is a super comprehensive dictionary of a wide variety of literary terms.
Y’know, in case you like that kind of stuff.
(I like that kind of stuff.)
DRAFT!
I finally have a COMPLETED first draft of my story. It’s been mostly done for months, but now it’s finally 100% complete from beginning to end.
It’s a lot longer than I thought it’d end up being (202,389 words, which is 318 pages of 12 point, single-spaced, Times New Roman), but I know I’ll be cutting a lot of it as I edit it.
Still though, this is the longest thing I’ve ever written and is by FAR the longest thing I’ve ever written that is one complete coherent story.
Now I’ve got to make it, you know, good.
Busy Bee?
So as you may suspect given how much I’ve bitched about this semester, I’m way too busy to do NaNoWriMo this year. Which is disappointing because I’ve done NaNo every year since 2017 (and several years before that). However, I may not have done NaNo ANYWAY, since I’m still working on last year’s NaNo and I honestly don’t think there’s enough of a story left to be able to do 1,667 words of it for 30 days.
So…yay?
More of my Terrible Teen Writing
HEYOOOOOOOOO so these are palindrome-based phrases that I wrote during a “writing partners” program in 7th grade. I thought these were GODDAMN GENIUS but most of ‘em are pretty dumb. Ready?
To reduce the growth of a Yam, grow it in May.
To cut out what Was, use a Saw.
To reverse the flow of a Dam, you’d have to be Mad.
What is Not is a Ton.
To turn off a Tap, Pat it.
Bob and Bob are twins, yet reversed. [THE FUCK IS THIS ONE OMG]
To make Don vanish, Nod.
To erase the Dot and the end of a sentence, hire Tod.
To make a dishwasher Stop, take out the Pots.
There is nothing more Evil then to Live without a purpose.
To stay far from Doom, make positive your Mood.
Don’t Yap, and your Pay will come more quickly.
Use your Time wisely, because you can’t Emit more of it.
Hahahahaha. Ugh.
Outline
Story update: I took a break of a few weeks from it after hitting 150,000 words. This was mainly because I had the end of the spring semester to deal with, but also to get a bit of separation from it so that I could look at it with fresher eyes for outlining purposes.
But now it’s been a long enough absence and I have to start outlining.
I am totally not looking forward to it; I don’t think I’ll enjoy that process. But I guess we’ll see. I tried to write the sections mostly in order, but without doing some more work, I don’t know exactly how close I am to being done OR how ordered things actually are.
Woo?
150,000!
I hit 150,000 words in Ghost Town Realty today! It is now officially the longest single story I’ve ever written, beating out my shitty fan fic that I’ve been adding to on and off for the past like ten years.
Anyway, 150,000 is the word count at which I told myself I would stop writing (or pause writing, rather) and instead work on an actual outline. I want to get all the pieces in the right place before I start writing again (which will probably involve filling in all the gaps to get a “complete” first draft before I actually edit).
Unlike every other time I’ve done NaNo, though, I tried to keep the chunks of writing in a vague order, so hopefully outlining and re-ordering won’t be too painful. Let’s hope!
Edit from August: OH GOD I HATE IT
100,000
I hit 100,000 words in Ghost Town Realty today!
I know that’s still basically nothing as far as an impressive word count goes, but…
a) I have no idea how much more I’ve got to go in the story
b) Once I get all of it out, there will of course be editing anyway, so whatev
c) This is by far the most excited I’ve been about working on one of my NaNo projects past November
d) This is also the most I’ve written on a single story apart from a terrible fanfiction that WE’RE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT because it’s basically Angst Town USA and is hardly a cohesive (or coherent) story
So yeah. Pretty cool. I’mma keep working on it and see what happens.
NaNoWriMo 2020 Complete!
Yaaaay.
Here’s our good old word cloud.
Now to do something I’ve never done after NaNoWriMo: keep writing!*
In the past, I’ve always said to myself, “okay, so December is your break; once the new year rolls around, you will continue writing on your NaNo project until it’s done.”
That’s never happened, because once December has gone by, I’ve lost my little “groove” that I get into in November.
SO!
This year, I’m going to try to do 500 words a day starting…NOW!
I think 500 is a perfectly manageable amount but is also enough to start seeing some actual progress on the story, ‘cause it’s definitely not finished.
It’s a stupid story, yes, but the idea won’t leave me alone (which is why I chose to “redo” it this year), so let’s just roll with that. Yay?
*Okay, I guess I re-worked Prime a few times, but that was…like…five years after writing it? And it’s still not done? And it’s the dumbest story ever so screw it?
It’s tiiiiiiiiiiime
Time for the annual NaNoWriMo excerpt!
Yeah, I know. I’m not excited, either.
Like I said, I hate this freaking story but it won’t get out of my head, so I’m writing it. Again. Sorta.
So to spare everyone too much pain from scrolling past a long rambling excerpt, I’ll just give you a short one. And a short one that only needs a (relatively) short preamble so that you know what the hell’s going on.
(As if you care.)
So this story takes place in a world where (some) people have the ability to see ghosts, and a portion of those people work for the Bureau of Death, Dying, and Deceased, which regulates ghosts and ghost-human interaction as much as possible.
The main character, Nick, works at the Bureau as a ghost realtor. His job is to relocate ghosts that are haunting houses in living-zoned areas to literal “ghost towns,” which are towns that have been converted for ghosts only. Basically, he gives a ghost a deed to an empty house in the ghost town so they can “haunt” it legally and without bothering the living.
People at the Bureau are ranked by “Witness Level,” which is essentially how many different types of ghosts they can see. Witness Level is roughly correlated with age; the older you are, the more ghosts you can see, generally. The main conflict of the story revolves around Nick’s Witness Level increasing dramatically when he is relatively young and how he reacts to it. But that’s not super relevant here. The relevant stuff here is that as Witness Level increases, ghost realtors start having to deal with bigger, more volatile ghosts, so they typically work with a partner. This is the scene that introduces Nick’s partner, Ben. While Nick is quite sympathetic to ghosts, Ben is…not.
Oh, and the “destabilizer” is basically like a ghost Taser. Realtors carry them but are only supposed to use them if they feel their lives are in danger.
Yeah. Stupid, right? Anyway, here’s the excerpt:
Ben thundered into Nick’s office later that afternoon. He led by his voice, which had such a carrying boom to it that it hurled itself into the office well before Ben himself made his appearance in the doorway.
“Nick!” came the voice, followed by the heavy thud of Ben’s boots, then by the large, wide man wedging himself through the doorway. “I’ve got somethin’ fer ya.”
Benjamin Price was the size of a refrigerator and marginally more intelligent than one. He was never without a cowboy hat and at least one article of clothing made from alligator. Sometimes it was the hat itself, but more often than not it was his boots, belt, or vest. You could smell Texas in his accent and tobacco on his breath. He was the color of Wonder Bread except after exerting himself, in which case the white would give way to such an alarming shade of bright red that one almost ventured to ask him if he’d forgotten to take a breath in the past three minutes.
He was this particular shade of red as he burst through Nick’s office door, puffing but pretending not to, with a small box clutched in one of his meaty fists. When Ben said, “I’ve got somethin’ fer ya” to someone, he usually either meant he had a stern word or a lousy piece of advice, which is why Nick was surprised when the enormous man plunked the box down upon Nick’s desk and panted, “A present.”
Despite working with Ben for the past five years, Nick still got a kick of just how out of breath his co-worker got just from hauling his massive self around the office. He waited with a patient smile until Ben’s breathing finally calmed, then glanced down at the box. “A present for what?”
Ben parked his behind on the corner of Nick’s desk. It creaked unsettlingly beneath his weight. “I heard you moved up a Witness Level. Figured you’d need somethin’ to help you with the tougher ghosts that you’ll be dealin’ with now.”
Nick had to laugh. “Tougher ghosts? I’m a Level 4 now, Ben. Blue Types. Caspers. The worst thing they could do to me is accidentally bump into me in a hallway.”
“Never hurts to be prepared.” He tilted his head toward the box. “Open ‘er.”
Nick knew what it was before he even laid a hand on the present, but he humored Ben and pretended not to have a clue until the box was opened and the protective plastic cover was removed from the gadget within.
“A destabilizer?” He held it between the very tips of his forefinger and thumb as it if was trying to bite him. “Really?”
“Fer the ghosts.” Obviously.
“Thanks, but I already have one.”
“Not like this one, ya don’t.” In his enthusiasm, Ben leaned forward, causing the desk to give another pained creak. “You’ve just got the company issue, and that model’s three years old now. This new one is better. It’s safer ‘cause it’s got a two-factor shooting system. It won’t go off in yer pocket by accident. And it’s more powerful. Higher voltage. Makes fer scramblin’ up those ghosts a lot longer so ya got more time to get reinforcements.”
As always, Ben made it sound like an encounter with a ghost was a fight for one’s life where only an army could defend you if you entered at a disadvantage. If only his enthusiasm for relocating ghosts was as high as it was for destabilizing them. He’d be a better realtor than Nick.
Nick opened his mouth to speak, but Ben stopped him with a roll of his eyes. “I know what yer gonna say. ‘I’ve never used one. I don’t like destabilizing ghosts. Blah, blah, blah, ghosts can feel the voltage.’ I know what yer gonna say. But on one of yer jobs one day, yer gonna be blindsided by some big-ass ghost who won’t respond to yer touchy-feely way of relocating it and yer gonna wish you had one of these more modern destabilizers to deal with it.”
Nick gave him a forced smile. “Well, when that day comes, as I writhe in agony on the floor with twenty broken bones, my only thought will be, ‘that Ben was sure right.’” He was still holding the destabilizer; he moved to put it back in its box.
“Hey, wait,” Ben stopped him. “At least humor me by switching it out with yer old one. Ya still got yer old one, right?”
Nick sighed as he opened his lower right desk drawer. “Only because I’m required to.” As much as he hated to admit it, the new destabilizer did look like quite the impressive piece of equipment compared to the older model that he produced from the drawer. Even in its yellow holster, Nick could see that the company-issued weapon was made of an inferior metal as compared to the new one and, as he made the switch, realized just how much heavier it was compared to the sleek, streamlined version that Ben had presented him with.
“There ya are,” Ben said with satisfaction as Nick worked the new destabilizer in his old holster. “Yer a regular sharp-shooter now.”
“I’m still not going to use it.”
“You will,” Ben said with a frightening level of confidence. “Some day you will. Just remember to aim at their heads. I read an article that says a destabilizer fired at the head will discombobulate them for a full twenty minutes longer than a shot anywhere else on them.”
“Christ, Ben.”
“‘Christ, Ben,’” he mocked. He then reached over and gave Nick a playful punch in the shoulder that nearly sent him reeling to the floor before he hoisted himself from the desk and headed out the door. “Yer welcome for the gun,” his voice boomed from the hallway.
Nick spent a moment massaging his shoulder where Ben’s fist had crashed into it, then picked up the destabilizer. He held it in his hand for a moment, then opened his bottom right desk drawer and tucked the weapon deep beneath a pile of folders. Upon closing the drawer, he promptly forgot about it.
Screw It, It’s 2020.
I ended up choosing to re-do my “Ghost Town Realty” story for NaNoWriMo this year. This is due to a few reasons:
1) I hate “Ghost Town Realty” just slightly less than I hate the other idea I had for this year.
2) I want to infuse more humor into the story, and I think the only way to do that is to start from scratch. I will use nothing that I’d written out from last time I did this (2018?) as far as actual words go, but I’ll probably re-write some scenes to add some actual humor. The story was completely devoid of that last time I attempted it and I really think it drained the life out of the whole thing.
3) I can’t get this damn idea out of my head. I hate it, it’s dumb, and it’s probably been done a billion times, but for whatever reason, the idea keeps sticking with me.
So yeah, that’s the plan.
At least until November 7 when I inevitably change my idea and have to spend the rest of November frantically trying to catch up on word count.
It’s tradition, after all.
OhNoWriMo
So NaNoWriMo is in like t-minus way too freaking soon and I still have no idea what I want to write about.
Part of me wants to re-write that stupid “Ghost Town Realty” story again because I like the premise and can’t get the idea of the story out of my head. I originally started that for my 2016 NaNo, but convinced myself that it wasn’t cheating to try it again for my 2018 NaNo because I didn’t even complete 2016 (that year was madness). But I’m pretty sure trying it yet again for yet another NaNo would be Super Cheating™ and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I mean yeah, the idea of NaNo is just to write; no one really cares what you’re writing about or re-writing about as long as you’re getting 50,000 new words in. But I’d feel guilty using the same idea YET AGAIN.
I have a title of a story to go with, but I haven’t quite yet figured out what story should go with the title. To be fair, that’s happened in some previous NaNos where I had a title first and then used NaNo to really built up the actual story (“Arborhood” comes to mind), but I don’t know if I want to “waste” this year’s attempt on something that might be garbage.
Hell, “Ghost Town Realty” will probably be garbage no matter how many times I re-write the entire thing, so.
Yeah. Super fun!
I know it’s only July, but…
What the hell should I do for NaNoWriMo this year? My 2010 NaNo predicted Steve Job’s death within like a half a year of his actual death (and also predicted Google Glass) and last year’s NaNo topic was freakishly similar to the COVID outbreak on the Diamond Princess at the start of this year (down to the fact that it was the SAME FREAKING SHIP), so…maybe I should write about something cheerful and good?
I have no idea, though. I have a story name, which sometimes is enough to get me started on something semi-coherent, but it would be nice to have a general story in mind.
We’ll see. It’s still a way off.
NaNoWriMo 2019: Complete!
WOO I won NaNo! That’s pretty good, considering I was more than 10,000 words behind pace at one point. My total end word count was 50,050.
Have a word cloud!
Any excuse to do a survey, man.
It’s NANOWRIMO SURVEY TIME ALSKDFJSLAKDFJSLDAFAGH
(I’m also procrastinating actually working on my NaNo, ‘cause that’s how I roll.)
Tell me about your NaNoWriMo project this year! Give me a blurb!
The stupid, surface-level blurb (I just copy/pasted this from my excerpt post a few days ago, haha): an outbreak of a mysterious, unidentifiable, deadly disease occurs on a cruise ship. Due to the mortality rate of the disease and the fact that no one knows what it is or how it spreads, the ship is denied the ability to dock at any country, forcing it to basically become a floating hospital that is rapidly turning into a floating morgue as more and more people become sick. The story follows three individuals – Jochem (a passenger), Hugo (the captain) and Dr. Wex (the ship’s main doctor) – and how they cope with the fact that they know they are probably going to die on the ship.
There’s more to it than that, though. The disease and being trapped on the ship represents something different for each of my three main characters on a deeper level than just “they’re going to die, how do they deal with that?” due to their different places in each of their lives. I’m actually really liking how it’s turning out so far, even though it’s an incredibly stupid premise.
What’s the genre?
Probably just mainstream fiction.
Describe your MC in three words!
I have three main characters!
Jochem: Conflicted, lost, impulsive
Hugo: Confident, sociable, proud
Dr. Wex: Unflappable, professional, persistent
Without spoilers, describe your villain in three words.
I don’t really have a villain, unless you call the illness the villain, I guess.
What is your goal? (the traditional 50k? 20k? 5k? Or…100k?)
The good old 50k, as usual. At the rate this story is going, though, it will definitely need to be longer than 50k to be complete.
Is this your first draft? Second? Third?
Very first.
Are you starting a new project (or draft) or continuing an existing one?
A new project!
What is your favorite time to write in the day?
I like to write later at night, but I’ve actually been spending an hour or two at work (just before I go home) doing my writing there, especially on the nights where I have to go to bed at a reasonable hour to go walking in the morning.
Where are you going to write?
Either in my office or at my home computer late at night.
Computer or paper?
Definitely computer, though I’m not above jotting down any ideas/phrases/conversations I think of during the day when I’m not near a computer.
NaNoWriMo is a huge commitment. How are you going to make time to write?
SACRIFICE MORE SLEEP
Are you going to participate in local or online NaNoWriMo events? (e.g. kick-off parties in your regions, write-ins, virtual writing sprints…)
People are terrifying, so no.
Do you write from beginning to end or do you skip around?
I do some major skipping around. I don’t write even remotely in order.
Planner or pantser? (or plantser?)
Pantser. Plans are for SQUARES
What will be your go-to NaNoWriMo snack?
If I’m writing at work, I’ll probably write while I’m nomming a pita. If I’m writing at home, I’ll probably nom some Jolly Ranchers while I write.
Choice of caffeine? (or no caffeine?)
No caffeine. ADRENALINE ONLY!
Any rewards for milestone achievements? For finishing NaNoWriMo?
Nope! The finished product will be tucked away, never to be seen again. And that’s the end.
Share a tip for other NaNo-ers!
DON’T FALL BEHIND, HOLY HELL
How are you feeling about NaNoWriMo? Excited? Nervous? Tired?
I love NaNo. I bitch about the time commitment, but I do enjoy having an excuse to write something. Lord knows I don’t write any other time of the year, haha.
NANO EXCERPT
*audible sigh*
Hello, all. So it’s the middle of November, which means, as always, that it’s time for me to provide you with an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project. I have an excerpt that I’m particularly proud of and want to share, but it actually has very little to do with the premise/main plot of my story, so I don’t think I’m going to share that one (even though it’s my fave).
So instead you’re going to get a different excerpt! The general premise of this dumb story: an outbreak of a mysterious, unidentifiable, deadly disease occurs on a cruise ship. Due to the mortality rate of the disease and the fact that no one knows what it is or how it spreads, the ship is denied the ability to dock at any country, forcing it to basically become a floating hospital that is rapidly turning into a floating morgue as more and more people become sick. The story follows three individuals – Jochem (a passenger), Hugo (the captain) and Dr. Wex (the ship’s main doctor) – and how they cope with the fact that they know they are probably going to die on the ship.
To set the following scene: the ship has been unable to dock anywhere for three weeks now because every country is afraid of this unknown but very deadly illness. So this ship is out there wandering aimlessly, trying to approach various countries for, if not the ability to dock, at least some provisions and fuel. By this point, a decent number of people are sick and the captain and crew have decided to dedicate an entire deck as a “quarantine deck” on which to keep the sick and those suspected to be sick to try to stop the illness from spreading.
Right now, they’re sailing through some nasty weather on their way to South America. The captain, Hugo, has been woken up by the storm and has decided to do a quick check of the crew as well as (in this scene) the deck that has been transformed into a quarantine ward.
GO! (I know, I know, the writing is terrible as always. It’s NaNo, what do you want.)
Upon leaving the wheelhouse, Hugo’s next destination was the quarantine deck. He hadn’t been down to visit it in a while – such a while, in fact, that it was only upon his reaching the elevator bay on the north end of the ship that he remembered that he had ordered that the elevators be shut down to try to prevent people from accidentally stepping off on the off-limit floor. Heading to the stairs, he met with the posted security guard who said that he could go and fetch Dr. Wex for the Captain if he wanted to be escorted through the quarantine region.
“I don’t want to bother the doctor,” Hugo responded, forgetting momentarily that it was far too early for anyone else on the ship to be awake, apart from himself and the men in the wheelhouse. “Just let him sleep. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
But the security guard shook his head. “Oh no, he’s up right now, sir,” he said. “Dr. Wex hasn’t been sleeping much as of late, and when he does, he has mighty odd sleeping hours. I’ll go get him for you.”
The guard had been correct; Dr. Wex was awake and greeted Hugo with a kind but tired smile as he ascended the steps to meet the Captain.
“Late rounds, sir?” the doctor asked, running his hands through his greying hair in an attempt to tame any flyaways that had jutted into existence during his sleepless hours.
“No later than yours,” Hugo said. “I hope you’re getting enough sleep, Adrian. I know it’s in a doctor’s nature to put their health last after everyone else’s, but the last thing we need is for you to collapse from lack of sleep. Hell, you saw what a case of exhaustion did to me, and I’m sure I wasn’t working any harder than you currently are.”
“I’m doing fine, Captain,” the doctor said. “I’m used to these types of long hours; it’s part of what you come to expect being a doctor. Though I must say it has been taken to a bit more of an extreme in this particular case, given what we’ve had to deal with.”
Hugo tipped his chin in the direction of the stairs. “Am I allowed down to the quarantine deck? I’m assuming by your lack of mask or body suit that you don’t suspect the illness is airborne.”
Dr. Wex shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not airborne. Not yet, at least. There’s no guarantee that it will remain that way. There’s really not much of interest that you’d be able to see down below, but I’ll take you if you’d like.”
“I would, thanks.”
Hugo followed Dr. Wex down the dark stairway to the fifth deck. The conversion from regular passenger’s quarters and public areas to a secure, patient- and doctor-only quarantine deck had happened as recently as five days ago. But despite how recent the conversion had been carried out, the formerly lively, passenger-filled Plaza Deck was now a quiet, eerie, unwelcoming place. The main lights on the deck had been dimmed, mainly to save on power and fuel since no one was really utilizing the deck the way it was usually utilized, and places like the library, internet café, and the two large aft dining rooms were hauntingly empty. It brought on such a feeling of discomfort that Hugo actually shivered.
“The most critical patients are still on the lower deck, in the ship’s main medical center,” Dr. Wex explained as the two men made their way through the main plaza and towards the passenger rooms. “But we’ve quarantined the mildly ill band those who we feel might become ill – family members, those who have been in contact with people who are already ill, and the like – up here.”
It had been an unusual effort made by the ship’s crew to transfer all passengers who had had rooms on the Plaza Deck to rooms that were higher up on the ship. Luckily, due to the time of the year in which the ship was cruising, it was only at two thirds capacity passenger-wise. This meant that there were, in fact, enough rooms to accommodate the sixty or so sets of passengers who had to be rehomed when the order for vacating the fifth deck came into action.
“How many of these rooms are occupied?” Hugo asked as they made their way down one of the hallways. Usually, when one walked down a hallway that was flanked on both sides by staterooms, one could hear a general din of muffled talking, laughing, stomping, and shuffling of luggage and belongings. This hallway had none of those sounds; it was almost as if all the rooms were completely empty.
But Dr. Wex gave the Captain a number that surprised him. “Thirty, I’d say,” he answered after a moment of contemplation.
“That many?”
“A fair number of those are just precautionary,” Dr. Wex assured him. “We’ve taken to quarantining those who have just been in brief close contact with sick individuals. People who have sat at the same dining table as a sick person, or people who have visited a sick person’s stateroom, that kind of thing. Most of the people in these rooms are, as far as we can tell, not actually sick. Sick of being quarantined, maybe, but not sick with the illness.”
“Are they all being fed in one of the dining rooms?”
Dr. Wex shook his head. “To keep contamination to a minimum, we’ve opened up the room service menu to include anything we’d offer in a regular dining room or at the buffets and have encouraged people to just order food to their rooms. It’s keeping the chefs a bit busier – at least, those who are still working – but perhaps that’s a good thing. It helps keep everyone from thinking too much about possibly getting sick themselves.”
As they continued down the hall, the ship gave a big, unexpected heave, and the two staggered to stay upright in the dim hallway.
“Woah,” Hugo muttered after the ship had rocked herself back to a steady position. “We must have hit that wave at just the wrong angle.”
“Do you need to go up and check on things, sir?” the doctor asked.
But Hugo shook his head. “It feels like we’ve steadied out. Can’t blame the crew for those rough waves that hit us like that. They’re doing the best they can.”
The doctor nodded. “They’re doing better than I ever could.”
Before the two could continue moving down the hallway, a low moaning sound filled the space around them. It took Hugo a few seconds to realize that the sound had made its way through one of the stateroom doors that was right next to him. He nodded towards the door and spoke in hushed tones to Dr. Wex.
“Is… are they…?”
“Are they infected?” the doctor finished for him. He shook his head in response to Hugo’s nod. “No, they’re one of the ones that was quarantined out of precaution. Thomas Bond is his name. He’s got wicked motion sickness, though; I can’t imagine how he’s feeling right now having to stay cooped up in that small stateroom with all of this rocking going on. Though I guess, to be fair, the swaying of the ship is much less pronounced on these lower decks than it is on the upper decks, especially the open ones. I believe his original stateroom was on the tenth floor, so this quarantining should be an improvement in his motion sickness, at least.”
Dr. Wex paused; he noticed that the Captain was paying attention to what he was saying, but was also propping himself against one of the hallway walls and was doing his best to stifle a yawn that had crept up from his lungs into his mouth. He had no choice but to release it, though he tried to do so discreetly.
The doctor couldn’t help himself from commenting. “You should go back to bed, Captain,” he said gently. “Try to get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do to help these people down here, especially not now.”
“I can try to get them medicine,” Hugo muttered through another yawn. “Once we’re out of this gale and closer to the South American shoreline, I can start sending out distress calls – calls for supplies, medicine, anything.” He lowered his voice, afraid that someone might hear through their stateroom door. “Currently we’re not at the point where the supply of provisions outweighs the demand, but if more and more get sick and deteriorate in the same way we’ve seen with the first few deaths, we might be needing less and less as time goes on. But for now…” he trailed off. He was so tired that he didn’t know where he had intended to go with what he’d been saying.
“But for now,” Dr. Wex finished for him, “there’s nothing you can do. No radio signal is going to get through this storm, anyway. Really, Captain, I suggest you go get some rest while you can. If there ends up being a crisis down here that I cannot handle on my own or my medical team can’t handle, I’ll let you know. Right now, everything is being handled as best as we can.”
The Captain gave him a tired nod after a moment of consideration. “I suppose you’re right,” he conceded finally, letting out another yawn. “I’m sorry I can’t guarantee you a break, Adrian,” he said as they turned about in the hall and started heading back towards the stairwell. “If there ever is a lull in your duties – which I suspect is rare, even when the ship is not plagued by a mysterious illness – please feel free to just go to your stateroom and relax or have a meal. Shower. Recharge.”
Dr. Wex smiled at him. “I will,” he said, “if such an opportunity ever presents itself.”
The two made their way back to the stairwell and Hugo gave the doctor one last parting “thank you,” complete with a congenial pat on the back. Hugo figured if anyone had an excuse to be more tired than he currently was, it was the doctor. But he trusted Wex in his ability to know his own limits when it came to sleep deprivation, so he left him to his lower deck duties and returned to his own stateroom.
The swaying of the ship had neither gotten worse nor improved; the same could be said about the sounds of the wind as it whistled through every open space or over every unsecured item on the decks, creating a mix of whistling, whipping wallops and an accompanying melody of unsecured objects repeatedly crashing into the deck.
Hugo was able to tune out these noises, in part because he had gotten used to doing so on almost every other seafaring job he’d held over the years and in part because he was so tired. Once he was back in his stateroom, he stumbled with exhaustion toward his bed, unbuttoning and shedding his coat in the process, kicking off his shoes, and removing his pants as well. There was nothing more comforting and enjoyable than sliding beneath the heavy silk covers that sat atop his soft bed, and in an instant, all thoughts about the swaying ship, the perilous gale and the relentless illness were replaced with the sweet, seductive tonic of sleep.
Every. Freaking. Year.
Will I ever learn not to fall behind in the first few days of NaNo?
No.
No I won’t.
NaNo? Nah.
It’s the first day of NaNoWriMo.
So did I write anything today?
No.
No I did not.
Fantastic way to start the month.
(Sorry, I hate myself.)
NANOWRIMO APPROACHETH
AND I DON’T HAVE A PLAN YET
(I never really have a plan for it, though, so what’s new.)
I have a character in mind, but I’m not sure what to do with him. I guess my backup in case I can’t do anything interesting with him is to do that whole “mysterious illness on a cruise ship” thing, but that sounds ultra dumb and I don’t know if I want to even put that on paper.
Who knows.
Roses are red, violets are blue
Other flowers are other hues.
(Sorry, I dreamt that goddamn stupid rhyme and I don’t have anything else to say today. Also, I’m a month late for actual Valentine’s day, THANKS BRAIN YOU SLACKER.)
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