In any case, still pleased that writing happened instead of doing some silly haiku and getting sleep. Well, pleased now, anyway; perhaps not so pleased tomorrow. But just goes to show: habits can make priorities change, and the changing of this one is enjoyable.

Standard NaNo disclaimer. It is moving slowly; that should be part of the NaNo disclaimer as well. But with any luck, this will take off once I finally sit down and churn out a few thousand words to get the party started.

The train was starting to speed up and Sohan was losing her leverage against the car she was watching. The cold air stung her face, but she kept her eyes narrow, glaring at the slowly moving car. It was odd to be racing a train full of unmoving, uncaring people, but then again she did that against cars every day.

The car slipped away and faces began to cut into each other, her eyes grabbing onto one face before losing it to another. And then–

Her stomach dropped and she had to force her eyes back to the street–but it didn’t work, they just went right back to staring inside the train, and now it was a cold, nauseous catalyst pooling in her legs, knees, and feet, trying to catch up with what her eyes needed to know and what her brain knew would doom her productivity, her mood, her not wanting to fucking drive the bike off the bridge.

If only my insurance covered booze, she thought, still staring at the car. The laugh didn’t come. She pedaled harder, ignoring the beeping of her phone.

Babies are not good.

They always create trouble.

They stare. I hate them.

– AndyMasterOfFish (with help from JaneWritesEveryDay)

She was heading towards the water, which wasn’t a great sign. Anything that was by the water could be gotten to faster by the highway—biking in traffic was great for windy little roads and crosstown jam avoidance, but a car pulling 70 plus down a nice flat piece of turf with neatly signaled exits would beat her old speeder any day. She kept pedaling, hoping for a turn before to prove her wrong, but the last avenue came and her phone beeped once—a left.

Jesus, she thought, I coulda taken the subway and avoided the rain.

At least it wasn’t in the water. You never knew with this job.

A car roared up on her left, sending a wave of streewater at her. She swerved, and another car honked behind her. Pedaling harder didn’t help—the car just kept honking, a heavy blaring that cut through the rain’s fog. She glanced behind her, catching a glare from the driver behind. Fuck it, she thought, and popped up on the sidewalk next to the metro.

As she pedaled, the metro rose up alongside her, train gliding smoothly along the inclined tracks until she was at eye level with the windows. A thick enough boundary separated the metro from the sidewalk that no one would be jumping on or off without some serious lack of sanity, but she could see in all the same. It was a good way to set the pace, and Sohan pushed her legs harder, watching the train out of the corner of her eye.

The bike hit a crack and it was only her reflexes that kept her in the seat. The puddle’s splash sent water straight up and into her eyes. Sohan yelped and blinked, squinted, took a valuable hand off the handles—something her brain hated her to do—and cursed under her breath. The fuck did I forget my goggles? She thought.

Then she remembered. This morning had consisted of a drunken walk around a neighborhood park—a neighborhood that wasn’t even her own—with a bottle of Jack in one hand and her foot-long U-shaped bike lock in the other. She remembered swinging one of them around, and bringing the other to her face, though she couldn’t promise that what did which stayed the same. After that had been a very embarrassing—and long—walk to his house, where she had stood for almost an hour working up the nerve and the bravado to start either yelling brilliant curses or weeping pathetically.

Instead I just stood there, she thought, flushed. Couldn’t get closure or fuckin’ humiliate myself. One of ‘em had to have been better than this.

Techno goes like this:

Untz untz untz untz untz untz untz

untz untz untz untz untz.

NaNo, as my boyfriend informs me, may not be something y’all know about. It boils down to this: thirty days, 50,000 words, one novel. Yes, that is very fast. Yes, that is a very short amount of time. Yes, most of it will be crap (amateurs and veterans alike agree on that). But you know what? That is one more novel, currently crappy or not, than you had written before.

And that’s not half bad.

This is. Bad, I mean. But there’s a joyous fun in that, isn’t there? I’ve done NaNo three times before, so there must be.

[Note: Be prepared for shameless word-padding, confusing dialogue, etc. I'll occasionally add clarifying notes, but if I haven't, you're not misreading anything. This is a very raw display of writing in progress, with all the desperation, confusion, and whining that entails.]

This is the first line of the novel.

This is the second line of the same novel.

Package strapped to her back, she ground her feet hard against the pedals, quads aching. The rain kept pounding, a blink-or-waterblind situation, especially since without both hands on the bars, she was toast.

Her phone beeped at her, twice—right turn. In water the old Duino cables were liable to short—too many times she’d absently jumped off the bike and ripped half the damn setup off—but with only ten blocks separating her from the prize, she wasn’t going to make any stops to insulate.

Going crosstown was the best for her, the worst for the pedestrians. In jammed traffic she could swerve in and out easily, hopping on the sidewalk for when cars had their own arguments. Too many people waited for them—two idiot cars trying to merge at the same time had cost many a prize—but with the right timing a hole in the crowd was always there.

A bright-eyed blond stepped out from the awning of a store to greet her, shining and sparking like a beacon of consumer light. Sohan squinted against the rain and pedaled harder, slamming into her without stopping.

Behind her, the blond still stood, smiling.

Of course, certain instincts were required.

Smarter riders would say it was something in the air, the way it shimmered when holograms were used; you could look for nearby lights and the reflections of cameras in the bike’s front light. Sohan used a mix of habit and cynicism: no one here, she reasoned, would ever be smiling like that.

At least most of the accidents she had been in had injured her most of all. A dull, nagging pain in her right knee snarled every time she pedaled, and her ribs were still sore from a brief flying lesson she had gotten the day before, courtesy of an automated SUV rickshaw. Half the show nowadays was just insisting you had money; getting investors only meant you had to pretend you knew what you were doing.

But there were other ways to earn money.

The phone beeped again—three times, straight ahead now. Sohan grit her teeth and leant forward, snarling into the wind.

The rain was hurling itself at my face and I sneered at the gray sky, a betrayer to the integrity of my pants and coat. I had no umbrella and could only tug my sleeves down lower, my coat around tighter, shove my hands further into my pockets. I shouldn’t show up to work in such a state, but at this point, it hardly mattered anyway…

So sick. It’s bad. Ugh.

Entry will be more haiku.

Surprised? Not by now.

Yeah, yeah, so sue me. At least Obama won.

But still, I write. At least a little. Because I will never get over the diagnosis my health services attempted to give me. Listen to the patient when they tell you they get strep >8 times a year, okay? Especially when they turn out to be, unsurprisingly, right in this case as well.

Rant over. If you’d like to see something of substance, I’d recommend checking out this awesome video, provided by the boyf.

Fevered, weak, raw throat.

Me: “Strep?” Doc:  “Acid reflux!”

Really, Doc? Fuck you.

Hopefully this blog will soon contain another NaNo tradition–i.e., an actual NaNo…

Tomorrow is now:

still haven’t written. New goal:

Start writing early.