Gliding his fingers across the surface, he lands a digit on a mountain chain, swirling and surrounding it like a snowstorm. He whispers its name “Caraballo” as he dances his way into the South China Sea. Drifting along an unseen current, Nathan sidles west around three continents before finally landing approximately where he lived: sometown, New Jersey, U.S.A..
He hated his hometown, so bland and mediocre in his eyes. He wish to be somewhere less narrow, more brilliant. Less shallow, more significant.
Nothing goes on here. Nothing of interest. Nothing important. He looks out his bedroom window and shakes his head and says “Nothing…”
He romanticizes things to the ideal degree but is such a cynic that he isn’t willing to try. Afraid of being let down. Just sticks with his maps and stamps and photos online. Never trying to venture out into the world or try study abroad. Just stuck in this strange juxtaposition of putting things on a pedestal but never wanting to look at it.
2 Figure out a last name that’s utterly fitting and sounds just great.
3 Figure out what town he should live in. Not big though, small, a little rural probably. Do NJ. Maybe pick somewhere that isn’t that diverse but somewhat close to NYC. I think. Hmm.
4 From the vantage point of his second story window, he sees the pavement with two parked cars: a green minivan and a blue acura. There’s a tree trunk blocking the view of the license plate numbers, bare of leaves and only of branches, sprawling towards the sky of white. The grass is deadening, turning yellow and unnatural to its normal hue. Cracked and broken, the sidewalk is bumpy and needs to be fixed. A young woman on her yellow bike zooms by towards the left window frame and out of sight. Out of minda.
A = what the girl was thinking about while riding her bike. Make it the female protagonist. Making her way down the road towards the post office, she thinks something something something okay here we go: What would happen if I just take off and just leave this town? Would anyone miss me? Or just call dibs on my belongings? Would they even notice? Would there be a search party after a few days? A few weeks? Two months later?
<footnotes end>
This is the entirety of my NaNoWriMo of 2011. Not even 750 words. *sigh* I don’t know if I should try again, maybe I will, I can definitely hit 1000 words before the month’s end. I just wish I knew the plot of last year’s story. Where was I even going with it? I wish I took more notes down but oh well. So far what I pieced together was that he, Nathan, is a collector of all sorts of maps and he keeps things bottled in. And the girl would help him admit these feelings. Something like that. Hrm. It’s a shame, I bet it was something interesting, or at least could have been.
It’s been a day less than a year since I last updated this blog. A long time coming. I’m gonna resurrect this wordpress and try to write something at least once a week. That’s doable. I have a terrible habit of not finishing projects but I want to change that. I want to actually finish something. At least one damn thing before the year is out. I definitely think I can do that right?
Right.
eileen