Slowly but surely...

This is day four of my customized calendar for NaNoWriMo, and I'm happy to report that I have indeed been writing -- unfortunately though, not quite as fast as I should be. To hit my target of 50,000 words in 30 days, I should have roughly 6,500 words written by the end of the day today. Thus far, I have written 4,000.

It's early in the "contest" -- as the organizers call it, even though you don't actually compete against the other writers -- and so I have time to catch up. I hope the story will flow more easily once I get deeper into the action of it. Right now, I'm sort of setting the scene and introducing the characters.

I have written three scenes of the story so far, and my rough plan was to have 30 in total.

Below is an excerpt of the scene I wrote today. As I explained Thursday, this contest is all about speedy output and so I must be excused if the quality is low. My hope is that I'll create a rough draft that can someday be revised into something readable. Also, this section is out of context with the rest of the story, of course, so I'm not sure how enjoyable it will be to read by itself.

I'm quite the salesman, aren't I? You all must be dying to read this now:

***
About 75 students trickled into Toulos’ Monday morning class of Economics 101, in groups of three and four mostly. The social scientist in him had observed that freshmen (which made up the majority of this intro-level course’s students) tended to travel in packs far more frequently than the university’s upperclassmen, despite the fact that many times they were clinging tightly to “best friends” whom they had just met a few weeks earlier. Toulos was tempted to conclude that students came to like each other less and less the longer they knew each other and therefore became less devoted to taking classes together, eating lunch together, etc. This might have been partially true, but he figured the more likely reason for the freshman pack behavior was to quell their insecurity about being at a new place and ranking as the lowliest members of this new society. Progressing through the ranks into sophomore, junior, then senior status meant students could traverse the campus with more self-confidence and less fear of social failure.

Perhaps his fascination with this and other freshmen phenomena was part of the reason Toulos insisted on teaching at least one entry-level course every year. His seniority and impressive academic record at the university easily qualified him to demand only upper level courses, populated by business majors and graduate students. In fact, these were the courses to which the university preferred to assign him. Still, a part of him felt refreshed by revisiting the basic theories of his field each year. He also had traditionally liked the opportunity to scour the ranks of freshmen and sophomores for potentially promising minds that he could then recruit to the business school, but that was years ago, before his less intellectual interests had taken center stage in his mind and detracted from his former vigor for academia.

This was the path of thought down which his mind was ambling when Toulos’ eye was pulled away from a group of students seated at the back of the lecture hall toward another group passing through the doorway. Leading the group -- flanked by more of a loyal, adoring entourage than a pack of insecure peers -- was a tall black man sporting a leather-sleeved letterman jacket, which matched one worn by a member of the entourage. He stood taller than his followers, at maybe 6’3”, and his thick neck muscles flexed against the itchy woolen collar of the jacket when he smiled and waved to a friend already seated in the hall. Toulos was almost certain he recognized the young man from photos, but the way that the rest of the class, even the unknowing freshmen, sat up at attention when he entered the room removed any doubt from the professor’s mind: Heisman winner Stefan Jones was taking his economics class.

Professor Toulos felt his pulse speed up and throb against the side of his neck. He felt embarrassed, as if the artery might be visible to the students, hammering away beside his throat in nervous excitement. Since beginning his fan fiction hobby almost five years ago, Toulos had never met one of his subjects, not even in a chance encounter on the street. He lived in Iowa, after all, not exactly a hot bed of celebrity sightings. Now, he was not only meeting one of his subjects but would be teaching him for the next semester. ...

Toulos swallowed what felt like a helmet-sized knot of anxiety and prepared to call the class to attention. He watched Stefan and his friends for another moment over the top of his glasses, ensuring the athlete had taken no special notice of the professor. It was silly, he knew, but he couldn’t shake a bit of uneasiness that somehow the linebacker might recognize Toulos as the author of some obscure, anonymous blog stories about himself. Even in the unlikely event that Stefan had seen the blog, the professor knew there was no way for him to know who wrote it.

“Hello,” Toulos attempted a loud call, but his voice hung up in his throat. He cleared it and took a deep breath. “Hello class,” he almost shouted. “I’m Professor Stephen Toulos. Welcome to Economics 101.”