November is kind of far away.

November is kind of far away.

It's amazing to have this much free time, to be able to do whatever I want and not have to feel guilty about pushing off homework. I can't wait until summer.

I've been writing lately, something that I hope might last until NaNoWriMo so I can finish it up then. Unfortunately NaNoWriMo's a long way off.

Anyhow, it's a bunch of short narrative things, each between a third- and a half- page long. They're supposed to be memories from three periods of the narrator's life (right now called before, after, and now) and will hopefully pull together to tell some sort of story. I've been writing in present tense because I want it to come off sort of conversational, but I also think it might make the narrator sound a bit stupid, which she definitely isn't, so I need to work on that. The pieces don't really go in any sort of order because I'm not sectioning off the three parts; the first part is sort of introductory but the rest might be able to be switched around. I'm not sure.

Here are two bits. Any opinion on whether it would sound better in past tense? Or if it's crap and I should throw it away right now?


Alone in a Crowded Room – Then
Arielle giggles, pulling me across the room. “Loosen up,” she says, “this’ll be fun.” This isn’t going to be fun, though; this is not how I want to be spending my Saturday night. I bet I’m the only person in the room who’d rather be at home with her mother. Hell, I’d rather be studying, yet here I am.
Arielle downs her drink and dashes off, leaving the empty cup in my hand. I set hers on a table and clutch my own. I refuse to drink it, since it didn’t come to me in an unopened can. I wonder about leaving, just going home right now, when I see Danny come out of the kitchen. I can’t recall whose house this is – Bobby, I think. I wonder if they’re friends.
Danny sees me staring and walks toward me. “Hey,” he asks softly. “I was just thinking about leaving. Do you need a ride home?” I don’t know what to day, so I just nod. When we pull into his driveway, I mumble my thanks and get out of the car.
We get to our front doors at the same time. He nods at me and waits for me to go inside before he does. That’s Danny. I silently hope that he knows that he means more to me than a ride home.

Daisy Chains – Before
Lucky died yesterday, but Mom makes me go to school anyway. She thinks it’ll be good for me to be around people, but I don’t talk to anyone during recess, not even Danny. I just sit by myself on the grass and make chains out of dandelions. In my mind they are big, beautiful daisies.
Then we have to take a big math test, one that will help the teachers decide what math class to put us in for 6th grade. I can’t concentrate, though. All I can think of is Lucky and how she would bark at the mailman, and how her tail would wag whenever I’d feed her. Soon, my paper begins to blur. Across the desk, Danny sees me rubbing my eyes and angles his paper toward me.
I’m halfway done with the test and I know how to do the rest; Danny knows that. He never usually lets me copy his work. When we’re walking home and I ask him why he did today, he says that he doesn’t like seeing me cry.



Has it occurred to anyone that 50,000 is a lot of words? That's kind of a scary number.