The Lion, The Children, And The Zoo

Dearest Judith,

It is with deep regret and a sorrowful heart that I write this missive to you. I cannot say when the madness first began to appear among them, but it spread among the children like wildfire and would not be contained. I believe the fancies begun with tales by Mr. Tumnus, our elderly gardener who once worked for the zoo until the unfortunate incident with the elephant which I shall not relate herein.

I have reason to suspect that the Turkish Delight Mr. Tumnus gave to Lucy and the others contained various hallucinogens owing to the bizarre nature of their behaviour and the eventual tragic results. While the police are still not certain about the events at the county zoo, it is known that Edmund decided a random woman was his mother and refused to leave her side until the other three children freed a lion and it attacked her and killed the poor woman and then the four children who were to all accounts trying to get it to “name the animals”, of all possibly absurdities.

The lion was rather enraged and the police shot it a multitude of times before it fell, breaking a stone park bench and, astonishly, trying to rise again before they shot it several more times. The children, alas, could not be saved.

The police are still searching my home for clues as to their aberrant behaviour but alas with the disappearance of Mr. Tumnus we may never know just what he gave poor Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter. God rest their souls.

Your loving brother, Digory.

P.S. You would not believe the condition of grandmother’s old wardrobe in the attic. I don’t know what games they were playing in it, but it is positively disgraceful. I cleaned out human waste from it and some of Lucy’s toys, leading me to believe the other three must have locked her in their at one point.

Box and fox excerpt

"A boy was following the path. He was thin and hollowed out, skin pale with a hint of grey under it, head devoid of hair save for spare eyebrows."

That is probably one of my better mistakes :)

A one word bit of fun

one word gives you a word, and sixty seconds to write something about it. This was mine:


All he had, he told her, was hers. She didn't believe him and returned home, across the seas, and he sent her his heart later that year, in a box, only it never got past customs.

Love, the post office said, is not exportable. Neither is that.

The nail

Thinking about Roy, my tears tracing
fresh lines of woe into my face like
the cuts on my arms, I cover my sorrow
with a veil, my arms with
a top, and oh, my sorrow, and oh, my
sorrowess, the memory is tender
as a bruise and my muse expires
from the pain of ecstasy as I write
his name in the sand of time to be
washed away, grimed and ruined
in all but memory of Roy.

I would have nailed him like Jesus
to the cross, licked his sorrow like
sandpaper-kitten toungues and the pain
of my broken nail reminds me tears swelling
like my belly (all better, now)
like a whale on the beach, dying, and he
no longer is, but I wish to see him
but once and again, forevermore. My love.

Boy and Fox, 10 days in

10K into the story. So far the oddest part has been the creation of GROWL (Grassroots Organization for Werewolf Liberation) and STARVE (Society to Achieve Responsible Vampire Emancipation). Both of which took over twenty minutes each to think up ....

Boy and Fox post

7 days into Boy and Fox (as of last night) and 7K and change written. A much slower pace than nano, but also a very different story. It's about a young man, currently named Boy (he has forgot his name) who is wandering a (the?) spirit world, en route back to his body. He knows he is looking for someone, but is unsure who, or even why. Currently he has been befriended by a fox that was eaten by ogres.

Summing Up

Nanowrimo went rather well, all told. Had four 10K+ days (the last almost 11K), average pace ended up at 6,000 words per day, which is decent. Had two 2K days and six 3K days on the low end. Nano #3 is also the first time I've ever gone: "Okay, I need X words by this day, Y by this day ..." and so on. I'm pretty pleased I managed to finish it with a few days to spare and didn't stress myself over it.

For next year, I'd like to do two 70-80K novel drafts, I think. I have no idea what yet, of course, and probably won't until, say, October.

And done

151515 words, by nanowrimo's count. Brain is dead.

On the plus side, I have now written a lot for nano.

2003, Waking Dreams: 52,214
2004. Higher Ground: 105,857
2005, Guardian Monsters: 54,347
2006, My Cat Used To Be A Buddhist: 50,074
2006, New Fires: 50,857
2007, The Coroner's Tale: at 62,857
2007, Roadside Attractions at the End of the World: 50,314
2008, Necessity and Power: 74,988
2009, Roadside Attractions (new version): 50,269
2009, The Adventures of the Miskatonic Elementary School Kids #1: 50,277
2009, Shadows of Never: 50,002

For a grand total of: 652,056. Damn.

And the 24th

33K total. Tonight could be 5K, but just feeling bleh and need to work earlier than usual so shall end it here (also at the end of a section). Next up is the Emily and Indians scenes, which should be fun. Tiger Lily will have someone to confide in and she'll realize how little power mother's have here and prepare to make a deal with the mermaids to break Marooners Rock and bring Captain Hook back from the dead. With luck.

And an update...

Managed to hit the 25K by Sunday night goal with an hour to spare. Kept going enough to pull off 10,400 words and beat my dad one record of 10,200 and change. Right hand is pretty sore this morning, but I did do almost 19K in 2 days so that's to be expected. (It's frustrating, since before the incident at work involving glass, a window, tendons and so forth I had never had any problems whatsoever with typing.) Now, I think that doing more than 3 nanos (Or, say, 150K itself) in a month isn't physically possible for this hand, even if I could pull it off.

Interestingly, I probably could manage it with the right story if I really wanted to. I wrote barely 100 words and change one day (didn't even bother to update word count) and had a couple of 2K and some weak 3K days. I think next years goal will be a 100k+ single novel, rather than the smaller nanoes and 70K stuff I normally do. Not sure what I'll write, yet, but some of us have been bandying about the idea of a group taking the same basic premise and seeing where everyone goes with it.