We gathered to gawk, write, and share.  Strength in numbers.  Courage under fire.  I’ll see you men on the beach, and that sort of thing.  The NaNo meeting went off without a hitch, the lone exception being the moment the lid was pulled from the container of broccoli.  I think I speak for the entire group, even those more civilized then I, when I say, “Holy shit!” The broccoli was eventually banished from the room.

We introduced ourselves and talked about our stories, or at least the idea of the idea of our stories, since naturally some of us haven’t waded too far out into the water.  We ate some snacks and poked around in our goodie bags.  NaNo stickers, a pin, an energy drink, and a bunch of candy.  Pixie sticks and candy necklaces!  The diabetics in the room were on there own.

We wrote a little and talked.  A brief discussion about the making of a superhero.

“It’s the villain who defines the hero,” Savannah said.  (Villain?  Was she the one, trying to read my brain and steal my story?  I sucked down a pixie stick.)

Talk about the forum board, and communication in general.  The misperceptions of words.

“I remember when computers first came out and...” Crystal begins.

I’m sorry, but what is she?  21?  22?  I’m fairly confident I was already a Pacman champion before she’d even been conceived.  I call her on it.

“Yes.  I remember when pixie sticks were invented,” I say.

You need to remember that kids these days have been weaned on a non-stop diet of in-your-face information, which is highly deficient of subtlety.  Let’s call it Subtlety Anemia.  The poor girl.  What am I saying?  The poor kids.  The whole room full of them.  Lost puppies.  With laptops.  Writing novels.  Good Lord, what’s the world coming to?

And then my laptop’s battery went dead and that was that.  I snapped a few pictures and packed up.  I apologize to anyone reading whose name I’ve forgotten.  It’s the weakness of the subtle generation, I’m afraid.  Our weakness of memory.  I’m sorry, really, and that’s in-your-face sorry, not some subtle, what’s-he-really-mean sorry.

That’s Robert standing there in the first picture, waxing poetic.  Crystal’s the one with the candy necklace around her head, and Savannah behind her, smiling about villains.  The night’s serious writer award went to Michael, who arrived late but pulled out a computer and keyboard from, I think, a superhero belt.

Can you spot the two romantic novel writers in the group photo?  Don’t try too hard, because they left early.  Off to a tryst, I imagine.

Oh, an excerpt:

The hermit got up to tend the fire - a woodstove, set into the fireplace on the south side of the living room.  Opening the door, he began poking at the burning logs, making room for another, wondering about what he’d just said.  Now that the words had left his mouth, he wasn’t so sure if what he’d told Kenneth was true or not.  It sounded good.  Was it simpler times that people actually grew lonely and wished for, or had he just made that up?  It was just the sort of question that’d led to his being alone.  One of those questions that begged consideration.

One of the many facts of the hermit’s life is that his beard will almost always precede his story.  The hermit’s beard, perhaps the one symbol most often associated with the hermit himself, is by nature at odds with the hermit.  The beard pushes into the world, almost seeming to seek attention, while at the same time, the hermit recedes from the world in search of reclusion.

I am no different, and my hermit’s beard is filling in faster then my hermit’s story.  I am not surprised.

But surprises do hide behind many a beard.  I was unaware of one of the definitions of the word beard, a person who pretends to have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone else in order to conceal the other’s true sexual orientation.

I couldn’t say for sure if I’ve ever met a beard.  I know I have never been one.

Let’s blame the painfully slow writing process on my swollen knuckle.  Every story needs a fall guy.

excerpt:

Kenneth had moved into the kitchen while he’d been poking at the logs, most likely to pour himself a cup of coffee.  The hermit appreciated self-sufficiency, which was another one of the reasons he’d isolated himself from people.  Not because of his own self-sufficiency, but because of what he saw as a lack of it in others.  As far as the hermit was concerned, there was too much dependency these days, enough that the thought of it was enough to almost make him physically sick if he dwelled on the idea.  The world had crippled itself somehow, kicking the legs right out from underneath itself.  With the exception of very few, it seemed to the hermit that everyone was no more then a step or two away from groveling at someone else’s feet, begging for help.  Kenneth had his flaws, the hermit knew, but at least the man knew how to get up and help himself to some coffee without making a big dance out of absolutely nothing.

I’ve decided to give speed writing a try for a bit.  No thinking or second guessing.  No going back.  No editing.  No plan, even, of where it is the writing is supposed to be going.

In other words, desperation writing.  Time to crank out some words and get this baby up to speed.  Maybe some dialogue.

360 words whip by.  Kenneth and the hermit, continuing their conversation, following last week’s conversation that was taking place about loneliness.  I think that’s what it was about.  It’s been awhile.

The hermit’s memory wasn’t so good any more, and he knew that he forgot more things then he remembered.  It came along with the territory, he supposed.  Getting old, withdrawing inside yourself, falling back on old, more stable memories then the ones that came at you so fast these days.  It was impossible, really, the pace of the world.  At least in the hermit’s mind.  How could anyone remember anything at all, with it all coming at you so fast?  Impossible.  That was his opinion on memory.  Impossible.

“I honestly don’t see how you remember so many things,” the hermit said.  “All these memories of the farm.  Your father, your mother, the people that worked there.  How can you remember faces that you haven’t seen in so long?  How long has it been, say, since you played with that little boy on the farm?  Fifty years?”

“Longer then that.  Sixty years, at least.  No, seventy.  I would have been about seven or eight, so about seventy-three years.”

The hermit hadn’t given much thought to Kenneth’s age.  It hadn’t even crossed his mind, or at least if it had, he didn’t recall.  But eighty?  He certainly hadn’t thought of Kenneth as eighty.  He’d imagined him more around the age of his own father.  Sixty-five, maybe seventy tops.

“You’re older then I thought,” the hermit said.

“I have the same problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m older then I thought, too.” The two of them laughed.

“I didn’t mean to change the subject,” the hermit said.

“Forget it.  Last thing the world needs is another old man going on and on ‘bout being lonely.”

“I don’t know.  Might be that’s exactly what the world could use a bit more of.”

“Ha.  Obviously you haven’t spent much time down at the home.  You should stop by sometime.  Plenty of people down there, going on about being lonely.  They might not put it into quite those words, but they’re saying it, all the same.  Going on and on, all the time.”

“I imagine you’re right.”

“Oh, I’m right.  So much talk going on in that place man can’t hear himself think above the noise.”

360 words in 15 minutes.  Let’s give this storm a Category 1 rating.