11,000 and counting

Whew. I've had a late night here, trying to catch up on some NaNoWriMo-ing. I started off the day (Friday) way behind schedule on my word count pace, but I knew Meaghan was having a night out with some friends and figured I could catch up a bit tonight after putting Logan to bed.

So, the count now is just over 11,000 words after eight days of writing. (If you do the math, I should have just over 13,000 now, to be on pace for 50,000 in 30 days. Ah... still some catching up to do, but not terrible.)

I'm really feeling good about this. It feels good to be regularly writing and moving the story forward. Every time in the past I've "tried to write a novel", I have worked on it very very sporadically. (We're talking: write a 1,000- to 2,000-word section once every three months or so.) Obviously, that's a very bad method. For one thing, the story never actually gets written. Secondly, it's almost impossible to maintain any kind of steady flow or a consistent voice in the writing.

Also different this time: I did a fair bit of planning ahead of time before starting to write. I actually know all the major events in the story and how it will end right now. I still don't know those details about any of the other drafts I have hanging around in the My Documents folder. I've even partially completed an Excel spreadsheet listing the individual scenes of the story, as part of the Snowflake Method, which I used as a rough guideline for my planning process.

So... for an excerpt. I won't be offended if people don't read these. I know it's hard to enjoy them without the rest of the story in tow. But, if you're interested, this is actually what I plan to be the very first scene of the book. (Pretend you haven't read that other scene yet.) Fair warning, it's about 1,200 words:

***

The professor pushed his shopping cart up to the back of the checkout line, behind a trio of young girls, maybe 13 years old, who stood scanning through the magazines that lined the end of the candy and gum display rack on this Saturday evening.
His pressed with an index finger against the noise piece of his wire-rimmed glasses, each lens of which made a perfect circle around each eye, cutting an odd-looking line through each thick eyebrow. He moved the finger a few inches higher to wipe away a film of sweat he felt forming at his hairline. The store was warmer than he would have liked, but its managers probably set the thermostat with people like these girls, who wore tank tops in January, in mind, rather than Professor Stephen Toulos, who wore a long-sleeve shirt and tie, vest, tweed sport jacket, slacks and leather loafers everywhere he went, all year round. Whether intentional or not, he wore a vest of charcoal gray that was nearly a precise match for his dark but graying hair and neatly-trimmed beard.

He stole a quick glance at what the girls were waiting to purchase. One held a purple blouse with a fringe of cream-colored lace lining the V-neck. Another girl held a two-liter bottle of soda, and the last held nothing but the magazine she was reading.

In the professor’s own cart, he stored an assortment of grocery items that likely would not be available for purchase in this Iowa town if it were not for the demand from the university’s faculty: Nutella spread, an unpopular brand of imported wine, an assortment of specialty cheeses, meats and bread.

Toulos took a deep breath, trying to create some form of cool draft in his lungs and to expel some heat. He stepped to the side of his cart and plucked a Newsweek magazine from the rack beside where the girls were congregated. He tried to be nonchalant but instead looked as if he were moving in slow motion, approaching the magazine rack and then slowly retreating from it, all the while examining closely each publication, most of them populated by attractive young women, wearing either highly fashionable clothing or else very little clothing at all.

“Excuse me,” he muttered to the girls, although he hadn’t been in their way.
Stepping back behind his cart, he thumbed through the news magazine, pretending to read its contents. What he was actually doing was reading the headlines of the celebrity gossip magazines close by and eavesdropping on the girls’ commentary on the latest celebrity dirt.

“God, Britney is so ugly and fat. When will she go away?” one girl questioned tactlessly and quickly flipped ahead in her magazine for something more interesting.
Toulos also could have cared less about Britney and would be satisfied to see her go away. He scanned the magazine covers again for some more interesting gossip – couples splitting up, couples getting back together, actors allegedly battling alcohol and drug addictions. It was the typical fare, but the professor was more of a special interest guy. He had a few particular people he wanted to know about, and the rest were just the subjects of trivial rumors.

“Paula to launch her own TV singing competition… and taking Randy with her?!?” blared one magazine. This caught his attention. He found his obsessions came easily for performers who were popular more than a decade ago and continue to try to remain relevant. He desperately wanted to read more about this idea. Given the question marks at the end of the sentence, and despite the exclamation point sandwiched between them, the report clearly had no official confirmation, but Toulos wondered who the source was for the suggestion, or whether the rumor had been picked up by any mainstream news sources. He checked whether the girls or anyone else in line were watching him and nearly stepped over to pick up the magazine, but he stopped himself. Even here, in the grocery store, where he saw no one he recognized, Toulos considered it important that he maintain his image as a widely respected university professor. Devouring the gossip of the supermarket tabloids did not fit well with this reputation, he realized fully well.

Just as he finished winning this internal struggle, one of the girls’ voices broke through his thought process: “Did you hear about Paula’s new show?” one of them said in her toneless, apathetic voice.

“I think it’s BS. It won’t happen,” another answered without looking up from her magazine.

“Oh, well I heard they were out doing auditions. Supposed to come to Chicago next month,” answered the girl who raised the topic.

“Nah, that’s just a rumor. Try to find it online; they’d be advertising the auditions if it was going on,” the other girl replied confidently.

Toulos found himself leaning forward and resting his arms on the handle bar of his shopping cart, having forgotten the need for discretion to hear what the girls were saying. The third girl, who apparently had no opinion or information on the singing show gossip, glanced in the professor’s direction as her friends debated the rumor.
After a few seconds, she took a second look, then leaned into the skeptical girl’s ear to whisper something with a smirk. Toulos straightened up but continued listening to the conversation. Suddenly the skeptical girl turned to look him directly in the eye: “What do you think, sir? Is Paula really starting a new show?” she asked him, then turned back to her friends who all laughed giddily.
“Me? Oh uh…” Toulos said, preparing to excuse himself from the topic and plead ignorance, but the girls had already returned to their own conversation, not really expecting or wanting an answer from him.

The professor suddenly felt it to be unbearably warm in the store. He loosened his tie and waited impatiently for the line to move forward. Much to his relief, the girls checked out soon after the confrontation and left the store without ridiculing him further, at least not to his knowledge. Even with them gone, Toulos couldn’t help but feel embarrassed that the cashier might have witnessed the exchange and probably would be thinking what an absurd fool he was as she rang up his groceries. He returned the unread Newsweek back to the magazine stand while his items were bagged up, then paid the bill and walked quickly out the door and to his car.

Toulos removed his jacket as he sat down in the car and his face gradually cooled off during his drive home. As much as he would have liked to laugh at himself over the incident, he couldn’t stop thinking how one of those girls could someday be a student of his at the university, and he hoped that they were young enough that by the time they were of college age they would have forgotten about this evening, or at least would no longer recognize Dr. Toulos as the professor who had eavesdropped on their girl talk.

As he awaited the start of the spring semester on the coming Monday morning, the professor was clueless to the fact that his secret obsessions would soon bring him more than enough humiliation to make the grocery store incident seem entirely trivial and hysterically funny by comparison.