Attempting NaNoWriMo 2011

I have the plans laid out for something with the potential of making it to 50,000 words, so I thought why not try it this year? Writing 50,000 words in one month would mean writing about 1,666 (NaNoWriMo is the devil? lol jk) words a day, which isn’t that much… at least not to someone who writes over that amount every day as a job. But…

I’m honestly not expecting to make it. I know, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Thanks for that, Henry Ford. I’m still going to try anyway and see what happens. We’ll see how high the dishes in the sink will pile up. How tired I’ll be from trying to stay up late to meet my word quota. How annoyed my friends and family will be with me writing all the time, not to mention my husband dying because he wants to get on the computer to play fucking Minecraft. I swear that game is taking over.

So this is both a challenge and an experiment with my life and myself as the guinea pig. Anybody want to be writing buddies?

Three Kingdoms Part 1 // A Hateful Curse

This story starts out simply enough, with a journey. It wasn’t a journey of destroying a magical object, or fighting some far distant foe, but one of three brothers who wanted to see the world beyond their backyard fence. After the farmer’s fields and over the rolling hills where the sun sank behind the gray, hazy line of trees on the horizon.

The mother of the three boys made her sons promise that none of them would leave on a journey by himself — he needed his brothers by his side. The oldest brother was the one who had waited the longest, his name was Adelis. He was the sickliest of the three brothers, but the wisest. Every night he read his two younger brothers a story from an old book, filled with ancient tales of monsters and the brave men who vanquished them. The second brother was strong-willed and a romantic at heart, his name was Walden. He vowed that he would someday find the dark-eyed woman he had met once in a dream. The youngest and most wild of the three brothers was Vinlay. He was strong and took every chance he had to play sports with the other boys in the village.

The morning that the youngest brother turned 18 was a happy occasion for the brothers, and a heavyhearted one for their mother. She knew she would have to let her sons set out on the journey they had been dreaming about since they could dream. It was as if something beyond their range of sight was calling to them. They set out that morning singing songs and laughing, talking about how they would do the things they had been talking about doing all of their young lives. Adelis was to become a Doctor — people would come from all over seeking his healing knowledge. Walden would find his dream girl and marry her, and young Vinlay wanted to be a famous sportsman.

After many weeks of traveling from one village to the next, partying and meeting many new people and having fun, they decided they needed to get serious about finding what they were seeking. One evening they got to the bottom of a steep hill and found themselves in a vast orchard. There were rows and rows of many different flowering and fruit-filled trees. They searched for the owner of this orchard but the land was so huge, the sun had gone down and they had to stop for the night.

The brothers were all hungry from their march that day and the fruit looked and smelled divine, but they knew they shouldn’t take any without asking first. After the two older brothers had fallen asleep, Vinlay, the youngest brother, lie wide awake with a growling stomach. The peach tree they were sleeping beneath smelled so good as the warm breeze blew down from the heavens and filled his nose with the sweet scent. He sat up and looked through the darkness, making certain there was no one around. Using his pocket knife, he carefully cut the stem of one of the lowest, heaviest peaches. He devoured the peach and even though he was still hungry, he felt satisfied enough to lie down and sleep.

Before the sun came up, all three brothers suddenly woke to the sound of far off howls. As the sound grew closer, they could tell it was coming from all around them. Chills went up their spines as they stood and drew their weapons, waiting whatever was coming to attack. The howls almost sounded human, but still distant and otherworldly. There was no more breeze, no more crickets or night sounds, only the horrible sound growing closer.

The brothers found themselves surrounded by a crowd of shadows. They didn’t know how the shadows could be even darker than the darkness of the night but they were there, as black and as ink.

“You’ve taken that which was not rightfully yours.” said a voice that sounded as if it came from a grave.

“We’ve taken nothing.” said Adelis, his voice shaking. “Please let us go.”

A dark jagged limb like the branch of a dead tree pointed toward Vinlay. “He has eaten one of the fruit of the orchard we are bound to protect. You must be punished.”

Without another word and without mercy, the shadows descended on the three brothers, pressing down on them as they screamed and tried to fight them away. The sun rose that morning on the three brothers, lying on the ground in the middle of the orchard.

They woke up at midday, remembering nothing of the shadow spirits attack, but they looked at each other and were overcome with hate. The brothers fought and nearly killed each other, before a man appeared before them.

“You must have eaten from one of these trees without asking. I am one of the caretakers of this orchard. It is protected by merciless spirits called upon by my ancestors to protect it from thieves. You’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“It must have been that greedy hog, Walden.” said Vinlay. “He’s always hungry and I’ve seen him steal before.”

“Lies! It was either you or our wretched older brother who only thinks for himself.”

“Leave this place with your quarrel, before I call the dogs on you. The hateful curse from the dark spirits will stay in your family forever.” said the caretaker.

The three brothers parted ways after leaving the orchard and settled in different lands, needing to be as far from each other as possible. They each founded a town, and each town grew quickly into a kingdom before the deaths of all three brothers. The hate between the brothers was passed down through their families, and the sons of the three brothers began waging wars on each other’s kingdoms. The wars were fought over territories, trade routes and many other reasons over the course of hundreds of years.

Click here to read Part 2.

End of writing break!

I’ve unintentionally taken a summer vacation from writing. Oops. Now that its starting to get cooler, my desire to be outside and doing other things will be gone. Time for more cold, gray rainy and (eventually) snowy days of writing.

So in the next few weeks I’ll start posting bite sized pieces of the fairy tale-type of story that I have in the works. I’ll give you a little preview: It involves angry spirits, a giant bird and lots of fighting.

Happy beginning of Autumn/Spring if you live below the equator!

Towners Woods

On Sunday we went to one of the most beautiful places around, one of my favorite places in the world (locally) — a huge wooded park with hiking trails and places to picnic called Towners Woods.

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