Fave line of the day: He just looked at her with a hurt and puzzled expression, as if she were letting him down for not finding him as fascinating as he did.

Word Count – 2606 for the day, 5211 total (not including warm-up writing)

Practice (my writing warm-up for the day):

Day Two

She tried to tell herself that the practice was the important thing but it hardly every worked. After spending your formative years being taught how to strive, it was hard to let go of the notion that you had to be heading somewhere.
It didn’t help that most of the people in her class were under ten. That’s what happened when you decided to take a group ukulele class. She had naively assumed that there would be other adults who would want to learn to play. She had imagined going for coffee after class, laughing about their nerdy instructor, picking away on their ukes while they chatted. The class was nothing like that.

For starters, the instructor was anything but nerdy, he was a muscled handsome man with hair she could just barely keep her fingers out of. He had a rumble-y voice that carried over, or rather beneath, the earnest plinking of the ukuleles in the room. She couldn’t concentrate when he spoke. As he began, she would drop her fingers from the uke and just listen. It wasn’t conducive to learning an instrument, but it was probably good for his ego. They probably would have ended up in a very different conversation if they hadn’t been surrounded by a group of eager 9 year olds whose enthusiasm far outstripped their skills. It wasn’t really possible for them to strike up anything, aside from a glance and wink, while the squad of plinkers filled the room with an unholy noise.
She practiced at home, partially to try to improve, and partially to impress him. She didn’t seem to be getting anywhere though, to her ears, she still sounded like a joke. She wished she had signed up for private lessons.
That began a whole other set of ideas of how the class would go. Matthew leaned around her, showing her where to put her fingers on the strings. That deep voice in her ear as he gave her further instruction.If she closed her eyes, she could picture the whole scenario. Half an hour of her struggling to concentrate on the ukulele. Perhaps meeting after class for coffee then deciding that he should walk her home.
The thought didn’t make her group class any more appealing, so she called in the morning to switch to private lessons. The rest of the week was eaten up in practice – practice conversations, practice outfits, and even some ukulele practice. By the time that Friday came she was composed entirely of nerves and adrenaline.

What was he going to say? Was this a waste of time? Had she misunderstood their connection? Would her week of practice be a waste?

Her boot heels clicked along the tiles in the hallway, giving her steps an authority she didn’t feel. She took a deep breath and turned into the classroom where he was waiting.

I’m challenging myself to do National Novel Writing Month and for my own amusement (and possibly yours) I will be posting my favourite line of the day and my practice writing (kind of a warm-up exercise before I get to my novel writing). I got the idea to share work-in-progress from Austin Kleon‘s book Show Your Work! The stuff I share this month will be pretty unpolished so please be kind.

Here’s Day One:

Favourite line: Her knuckles were white as she peered over the steering wheel at the dark road ahead. It was always annoying when the metaphors in life got this obvious.

Practice: (this has NOTHING to do with my novel)

Eloise had never been one of those people who longed to know the future. She didn’t visit psychics, never glanced at tarot cards or runes, she didn’t even read her horoscope. So when her fall over the stairs left her able to glimpse a few minutes forward, she didn’t thrill at the new discovery, she was horrified.

It sounds, at first, like it might be exciting to know what’s coming but it’s really the worst kind of horror, since a few minutes is often enough to see something horrible but not enough to do anything about it.

Sure, she had had time to grab the toddler who took a sharp left into the traffic on Water Street while his mother was picking up some dropped packages, and she could put up a hand to catch the frisbee careering towards her head at Bowring Park, but it hadn’t been enough time to convince that teenaged girl that her skateboard trick was going to end in disaster.

It was typical, really. Probably fifteen-year-old Eloise wouldn’t have listened to a middle-aged Mom who came racing out of the convenience store and begged her not to try the jump either. It was harsh to be the Mom in that scenario, even if the kid wasn’t yours. She had felt like she had to bear witness though, to stick around while the girl – Hannah was her name, judging by her friend’s sobbing repetition- built up speed and ramped over the path next to the building. It looked fantastic at first, her black hair soaring out behind her, her arms extended for mid air balance. For those few seconds, it could have been a photo in a ad. It didn’t last.

Something went wrong as the girl was about to land. It was hard to tell what happened exactly, but anyone could tell something was off. The girl’s trick ended just as Eloise had seen that it would, the one light brown arm folded over the girl’s head, the other out to the side, legs crumpled underneath, and a long, bloody scrape up the side of her ribs. The mental image had been horrible. The reality was, of course, far worse. She wasn’t dead, the jump wasn’t that high, but she as going to be in a lot of pain for a long time.

Eloise sent flowers. It didn’t feel like enough, but what else could she do? Sure, Hannah would likely listen to her now, but what good would it be to warn her of upcoming blood tests and the way her face would look when the meds wore off? Seeing a few minutes into the future was useless.

The papers didn’t think so, though. They started calling right after Hannah’s accident, one of her friends must have told someone about the crazy lady who had warned them not to do the jump. So Eloise had an inbox full of media requests, and her voicemail was full. She wasn’t going to talk to anyone about it though, there was no point in cataloging another way that her reality didn’t match up to people’s expectations.