I did some calculations for the rest of the year, starting today, and came up with 107,520 words through the end of the year. Natually, administrivia posts like this don’t count toward that. Over on the sidebar I’ll be tracking my progress, thanks to the Zokutou Word Meter! Those guys are awesome for making this easy.
She didn’t even like sushi.
At least, she supposed she didn’t. She’d never eaten sushi, but she wasn’t fond of fish, and she suspected that uncooked fish wouldn’t be an improvement.
But…
“Sure, sounds great!”
Jason gave a grin. “Great! I’ll pick you up ’bout six, ‘kay?” He moved down the hall without waiting for the answer.
“I thought you hated fish.”
“Shh!” Beth winced, watching Jason walk away.
“And I thought you hated Jason.”
Beth winced again, but Jason had already turned the corner. “Will you shut up, Kate?”
“Well, you did.” Kate grinned, leaning against a locker. “You were avoiding him last spring.”
“I was not,” Beth exclaimed. “And anyway, can you blame me for changing my mind? He’s gone from total wimp to hunkasaurus rex! How’d he manage to bulk up that much over the summer?”
“That’s really a good question,” Kate said. “Not only that, but he’s gone from team dud to team star this year. Most passes caught and most tackles in the last two games.”
Beth nodded and slowly grinned. “Yes. And he wants me to go out with him.”
“For sushi.”
“One must suffer for her popularity.”
Kate shook her head. “Yeah, well, just be careful, okay? Don’t eat anything poisonous… and don’t listen to anything poisonous. He was creepy last year, and there’s no reason to think he’s changed that.”
“Oh, Kate, you worry too much. I’m sure he’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
—
Perfect gentlemen, Beth was fairly sure, do not drug their dates. Certainly not on the first date. But that had to be what had happened. The last thing she remembered was going back to his place for a nightcap. Sure, it was against her parent’s rules, but Jason had been so charming during dinner (and she found that sushi wasn’t bad) and the suggestion to spend some time together had seemed right, and his folks would be there.
Only his folks hadn’t been there, just his uncle. Even that hadn’t made her suspicious. Her first indication something was wrong was that the Coke had tasted off. But just like when he invited her for dinner, she didn’t want him to think anything was wrong, and he was drinking his Coke and they’d both come from the same bottle, so she decided it was something wrong with her and worked to finish it off.
She didn’t remember finishing it off. With all the cotton she felt in her head, she had a feeling she’d blacked out somewhere between halfway through the drink and finishing it, but she couldn’t be sure. Whenever it had happened, though, she knew she’d been unconscious long enough to be strapped to a table in a room with lights so bright that she hadn’t yet been able to keep her eyes open long enough to look around.
“I think she’s coming around, Doctor.” Jason’s voice.
“Of course she’s coming around, dolt. The dose was precisely calculated for her body weight so that she’d be unconscious for thirty minutes, and it’s been thirty-two.” And that was the uncle. Wait, doctor?
“Of course, Doctor.” He paused a few seconds. “Wait, doesn’t that mean it wasn’t precisely calculated? I mean–”
“Clearly the girl has been feigning unconsciousness while trying to figure out what was going on.”
“Oh.”
Beth sighed inwardly. So much for that… “Then would you mind telling me?”
“Oh, why not? I’ll be giving you the memory eraser after we finish the procedure anyway…
“Um, are you sure that’s a good idea Doctor?”
“Well of course I’m sure. If we don’t erase her memory, then she’s going to be able to finger us for mildly illegal activities.”
“No, I mean–”
“Shut up! The lady asked a question, and she deserves an answer!”
By this point, Beth had gone from thinking she was in a bad position to knowing it. These two were clearly insane and about to do something to her, possibly something horrible. There was still a bit of a cottony feeling in her head, but that was minimal compared to the amount of panic she was starting to feel as she tested her bonds once again.
The doctor’s voice came closer. “It’s simple, really. Through exhaustive research, I’ve identified certain genetic markers that are inhibiting evolutionary changes in mankind. Only a very small percentage of the population shows the potential to have those markers removed through the process I’ve developed. My nephew was one-such… and you, dear girl, are another.”
Beth blinked as much as she was able when taking into account that she still couldn’t open her eyes. “So, what, you’re mutating me?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. You’ve seen what the process did to my nephew. It’s raised him to the pinnacle of humanity, and it will do the same for you.” The doctor paused, and she heard him adjusting some machinery. “But that’s really more of a side effect. The process also reverses those genetic markers, so your children will be on the next step of the evolutionary ladder.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a huge problem with that,” Beth started.
“Irrelevant! You will undergo the process, and you and Jason will be the parents of Homo Superior–the superman!”
“Doctor, the capacitors are fully charged.”
The doctor’s tone relaxed immediately. “Excellent. I’m afraid this is going to hurt, my dear, but don’t worry. You won’t remember a bit of it.”
Her screams started before the lights flared even brighter, but they didn’t stop after that.
—
Beth blearily opened her eyes and looked around a moment. She’d apparently passed out on Jason’s couch… and he, being a gentleman, was sleeping in the easy chair. She felt off, as though her clothes weren’t fitting properly, and a little lightheaded.
“Nrrgh… that’s it. I’m never eating sushi again.”
(1,024)
A drabble is an extremely short work of fiction exactly one hundred words in length, although the term is often misused to indicate a short story of less than 1000 words. The purpose of the drabble is brevity and to test the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in an extremely confined space.(Thank you, Wikipedia, fount of all knowledge.)
It would take 10.24 drabbles to make up onekay, which is kind of a silly thought. And I can’t use the misused form of the word drabble, since it refers to a short work under 1000 words.
So, to start my first day right, I’m going to introduce a new term into the universal lexicon. The kayble. A kayble is, of course, a short piece of fiction that comes out to exactly 1,024 words. It is sometimes misused to refer to a short piece of fiction that comes out to 1000 words, but we purists shun such people.
Now, while I do have writing plans for this place (it’d be silly to start something like this without a plan, right? Right.) I’m sometimes prone to fits of writers’ block on a project and need to have backup things to work on to keep the pump flowing. And that, dear readers (if there are any) is where you come in. Give me an idea to develop into a kayble. High concept, low concept, fanfic, pontification, portentious, silly… whatever. Challenge me. Keep the challenge down to… oh, say 80 characters. I’m not going to put any other restrictions on it, but if I’m not familiar enough with a fandom then I’ll ask for something else, and if I don’t understand the challenge I might ask for clarification. I also might just take the challenge and go a completely direction with it, too. Nothing is guaranteed.
Well, what do you expect for free?
In 2004, I attempted NaNoWriMo for the first time. I failed spectacularly, due to illness.
In 2005, I tried again. This time, I failed spectacularly due to illness.
In 2006, I tried again. I managed, barely, to keep ahead of illness, writing whenever I felt up to it and just about killing myself to finish in the last week… and did, in fact, win. Yay me!
The stuff I produced sucked. I mean, awful, awful stuff. It proved to me that I could, in fact, produce fifteen hundred words a day for thirty consecutive days, on average, and for that I’m grateful, but I want to write something worth reading, too. So, since I’ve already won once, there’s no real pressure on me to do NaNoWriMo again. But I find that having a writing project does help me focus, so I’ve decided to take one up.
My target is a bit lower. Rather than fifteen hundred words a day, I’m going for one thousand twenty-four a day. That’s on average, of course. Some days might be a little more, others a little less… Inspiration could hit and I write a ton, then nothing for days. And it’s a goal, not a concrete barrier. I don’t want to break myself trying to get there, and I’m not going to stop there if I hit it and still have something to say.
There are many accepted standards for “novel length,” but many first-time novelists are told to aim for between 80,000 and 120,000 words, after writing, editing, deleting, writing, deleting, burying under a pile of rocks, recovering, rewriting, filtering, editing, and polishing. Let’s call it one hundred thousand. If I can manage 1K words per day, that comes out to three hundred seventy-three thousand, seven hundred sixty words. About 3.75 novels.
I know I can do the wordcount. Let’s see if I can do it without sucking.
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