Stories (Craig's Attempt at the Impossible)

[Craig]

I couldn't resist the nostalgia.

It's been quite some time since I've engaged seriously in anything at the NTWF. I'm not even sure if everyone I used to know is still here, or still active. But coming back feels like coming home, and that's a good feeling.

Last year was sort of my prodigal NaNo year. I ended up slapping together a bunch of short stories I'd already written with a few new ones, and fudging the word count to nudge myself over the 50,000 word threshold. Of the -- what is it now? -- five consecutive years I've done NaNoWriMo (this year will be the sixth), it was probably the least productive. I can't honestly say that I learned much about myself or seriously honed my writing style, which is something I could say very emphatically about all the other years. I'm hoping, this time, I can turn it around.

I hadn't planned on trying again this year. It's my junior year at college, and I'm working two research jobs, writing for our newspaper, editing a journal, speaking on recruiting panels, studying for the MCAT, writing scholarship essays, TA-ing a class, taking five challenging courses of my own, and... I don't even know what else. Writing 50,000 words in November, when I've got final exams in the second week of December and infinite other commitments to manage, is insanity.

But I have to try. I came to this realization last night, possibly because the cosmic pull of the approaching month was drawing me back to the memories of some lost time, the gushing creative energy of my previous NaNo journeys. My brain, subconsciously, was scanning for a reason to pull me back into that bliss. And it found one. As it turns out, I have no less than sixteen short story concepts/outlines/drafts waiting for me in my special fiction folder on my computer.

How these ideas have accumulated is understandable. My creative muses remain as active as ever, but my time simply does not allow me to write much anymore. And so, I stumble into all these great ideas and can't put them down on paper.

This November, I'm going to make that happen. Somehow. However I can. Please, wish me luck. I will need it desperately.

The prospects are daunting, but I feel like being back here at the NTWF, and being back in NaNo mode, the impossible becomes possible. There are dark corners of time in every day that get wasted, chipped away. If I can grab hold of these and hold on tight, I'll be able to do this. I'm back home, I'm in my comfort zone, I have the ideas already laid out in front of me. Everything is waiting. And that makes me excited. ^_^

It's good to be back.

[Craig]

I am hoping to get feedback along the way (or, at least, after I've finished), and I thought I might try to get this started now, before everyone's schedules go all nutty.

I'm going to post a (very short) story that I had published last spring, which indicates one of the directions in which I've been moving in my post-Neopian Times writing. (Yes, I divide my career into such eras.) I may post one or two more depending on how things go. These won't be included in my NaNo efforts (no cheating this year!), but if I can get some good feedback on strengths and weaknesses, it will be a tremendous aid in the way I approach my new work.

So, here's a little something.

SPOILER: Click to show

They decided to go to the café for drinks after the movie, and they were seated at a table for two by the window. She ordered the special seasonal peppermint hot chocolate; he ordered coffee. It was snowing outside, a soft dry snow that collected in clumps on the pavement like cotton seeds and didn’t melt, as if someone from a department store had torn open a bag of artificial flurries and shaken them into the empty air. Outside the window, they could see people beginning to line up on the sidewalk. It had been crowded earlier with shoppers and the usual foot traffic, but now families were stopping under street lamps and watching police officers direct cars off the road and down side streets.

“It must be the parade,” she said, cupping her drink with both hands. She was leaning forward and looking out the window.

He had one arm on the table and the other resting on his leg. “I didn’t know it came this way.”

“I think it’s just cutting through. It looks like they didn’t block off the whole road. Do you think we’ll be able to see it from here?”

He turned his head and followed her gaze outside. The road had been cleared of traffic, and there was an audible buzz of conversation mounting. People started flooding in like the crowd at a horse race: they came from mostly the same direction, adjusting their hats or purse straps and hurrying to squeeze into a tight pack that clung on either side of the street, jostling a little, but politely, and steadily getting thicker. Even shoppers who were passing by stopped to peer over shoulders and catch a glimpse of the horse and buggy that was turning the corner.

“Look, here it comes,” she said. “I can hardly see it, though. We should’ve gone outside.”

“I think we missed our chance,” he said. “But at least there’s nobody standing in front of us here, right?”

“It’s been so long since I’ve come to this,” she said. “I always forget.”

“Me too. We used to go every year when I was little.”

“Gosh, this brings back so many memories.”

He looked at her. She was clasping her drink and breathing on the glass, moving her head almost imperceptibly to see through the swaying ridges of children who had been lifted up off the ground. There was music playing from around the corner, a jingling, brassy high school sound, getting louder as the first float, dripping with glittery homemade icicles, came into view.

“Still, it’s never the same,” he said.

She turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. When you’re older. It just doesn’t feel the same as when you’re a kid, stuff like this.” He was pushing his cup around in a circle on the table.

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and he could feel her eyes on his face. There was a bell choir walking by outside, which drowned out the drone of the café for a moment. “Well, that’s the way with everything,” she said after the volume settled. “Nothing’s ever the exact same.”

“Yeah, I know.” He laughed and looked up at her. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Her eyes dropped to his hand, which had become still, wrapped around the base of his drink. “You can’t be a little kid forever,” she said, returning her gaze to the window.

He kept his arm on the table as the rest of the parade traveled through. He could see her eyes flicker and move with each float that passed by, but her head no longer shifted side to side, and they were both quiet. He listened to the music ascend again as a band and singers filed past, and a rising hum rippled through the people lining the sidewalk when the sound of sleigh bells shivered around the corner, swelling into a cheer for the arrival of the sleigh itself, with a Santa Claus waving and winking at the children perched on either side of the road. A few people sitting in the café clapped, but he didn’t lift his arm from the table and she was still holding her hot chocolate. There were two elves tossing handfuls of wrapped candies from the back of the sleigh, and a peppermint bounced off their window and cracked on the pavement.

“I think that was for you,” he said, smiling at her with a gently cocked eyebrow.

“I’m pretty sure those are for the kids,” she said.

Then it was over: the crowd deconstructed itself and dispersed amid the falling snow, and he paid the bill. They left the café and went out into the street, where the flurries swished around their ankles and collected like dust in the bend of the curb.

[Zylaa]

Great to see you back around! ^_^ NaNo is always one of the best times of the year, and I'm glad it brings old NTWFers home.

As far as critique goes, the main thing I'd have you keep an eye on is timing and position. E.x. it seems like the entire street fills up with people in the span of a normal pause in conversation, and I can't figure out how long the parade is supposed to be-- I'm used to very long parades, but she's nursing her hot chocolate until the end, and it would get cold. You imply that the parade starts with the horse and buggy, which threw me off when it turned out that the float was the actual start. That sort of thing.

You've got some fantastic choice details, I love the contrast in what they're drinking, it sets the tone of their characters right from the beginning. Stylistically, it's not what I generally read, so I can't give you much feedback beyond this, sorry. I hope this helps!