NANO - Day One - Where the Rubber Meets the Road

So I got started late. I've been having difficulty lately with pain in the hips and back. The pain is starting to subside, so I'm hopeful I can spend longer sessions at the computer.

Here's a snippet from what I'm working on for How to Think Sideways. Doesn't exactly meet the NANO qualifications, except that I only put word one down yesterday, but hey, NANO is whatever you make it, right? This is my NANO.

Goal is 1700 words a day. Thankful for what I get.

November 15, 2008: 1,300 words

First draft, certainly subject to change. Please don't quote or repost.

Katie Medina gave Suttonsville a huge thumbs down. She called it Sucksville, but under her breath, where her parents couldn’t hear. The people were dull, and her new classmates uninteresting. Except when they were thinking of new and creative ways to snub her.

She stared out her bedroom window. Dad had brought them to live here—on a farm, of all things! Okay, a non-working farm, but still. Her bedroom looked out over the tangled growth of wood that stretched for miles from the backside of the decrepit old barn she could see to her right if she strained her vision. The woods drew her attention—the depths seemed to change with the movement of sun and shadow and become a completely different place every time she looked. As if it moved while she wasn’t looking.

Today, the woods were quiet. Snow covered the ground, painting the stark branches white on top. The interior of the woods seemed darker than ever against the white contrast of the snow in the farm yard.

Katie turned to her bedroom. Peeling wallpaper, deep casement windows with wood some enterprising soul had painted white, and wide plank floors painted gray. Highly unsatisfactory. The memory of her old bedroom, up-to-date and modern, with apple-green walls and windows that you could raise without jerking and straining brought a kernel of anger to the back of her throat. At least she had the second floor of the farmhouse all to herself. Her parents slept in a large echoing room at the back of the house at ground level.

Restless, Katie took the creaking stairs down to the main floor and through the hall toward the kitchen. The Christmas tree stood in front of the bay window in the living room, still unadorned. Katie passed by, hurt ballooning in her chest. Mel had always been the one to decorate the tree, harassing Katie until she helped. Not this Christmas tree. She realized with a sense of shock that Mel would never see her handiwork in front of this bay window, lit and glowing. Mel would never decorate a tree ever again.