The Challenge

Happy Holidays everyone!

And now let me introduce the gift I am giving to myself: The Challenge.

Let me preface this with my recent trip to the bank. A lovely girl works there, her name is Aimee, and she is always sweet and kind and has a genuine smile for me when I come in to cash my checks. Offering me friendly suggestions and tips with her co-worker Diane, they led me to the cash-back option that I can use while spending money with my debit card (fun idea) and how state checks are cashed at her bank, and "what kind of change would you like?"

One day not too long ago, we struck up conversation, and the topic of NOMO came up. Perhaps the acronym is wrong, but I mean to accent National Novel Writing Month, November. She confided in me with pride in her eyes that she completed 57,000 words, and I gave her a giant grin and congratulations.

And so I told myself... If she can do it, while working full time 8-4 every weekday... Why can't I? Granted, November is done and over with, and I barely snuck out 1,000 words in my spare time, but whos to say that I can't do it any other time I like? For example... December?

So I decided to give myself a challenge. I set my chin, forced the self-pitying tears away from my eyes, and declared:

I will write 60,000 words by the end of December.

And I encourage you to join me on this adventure. I will try to post every day my word count and how I am doing. Perhaps even sneak in snippets of my work for your perusal.

Let the count begin:

23 days remain.

Word Count: 7,358

GO.

Holiday Wishes

Let me see, I shall start this entry with a short list. Maybe two.

Top 10 things to receive for Christmas, From Oru's Perspective. 9In no particular order):
1. Money
2. Hand made, thoughtful tokens
3. Games of any shape, size, or variety
4. Food
5. The Promise of a Good Time
6. Books, Journals, or writing implements
7. Household Necessities - even gift cards for such
8. Pets or critters
9. Alcoholic Beverages in fancy bottles
10. Letters in the Mail

Top Worst Gifts In Oru's Known History:
1. Cheesy Ties.
2. Underwear
3. Severely religious paraphernelia
4. Lectures
5. Sea-shell filled, gold studded, white decorative plungers
6. Highly toxic, decorative, obscenely superfluous oriental serving bowls
7. Anything you feel obligated to wear at a later point that is so obviously not your style. (IE the Weasley's hand knit sweaters)
8. REALLY expensive things.
9. School Supplies
10. Bad News.

In any case. Now that this little portion of today has been concluded...

I hope all of you have a fantastic time preparing for the holidays - getting the tree, lighting the candles, inviting the friends over, sending and receiving cards and letters. Remember, this is the time of year that should be ALL YEAR ROUND. But, for those of you who need an excuse to be nice, pleas edon't pass up this opportunity.

Many Happy Returns

Oru

Short Writing Sample

This is the kind of writing I have been doing lately. A lot of it distantly correlates tt he Role Playing sessions I indulge in. Please enjoy this next piece.
~*~

Before you are the sands. Even now, in the fading hours of the day, the heat rolls off of it like rain off of oiled canvas. It caresses your face and pools in your heart like dark water after a flood. What is that feeling that stirs in your chest? That emotion that pulls up the hairs on the back of your neck, and raises your flesh into goosebumps? It is unavoidable now. Through the apprehension instinctively rising in the back of your throat, that emotion digs in its claws and bleeds you to take firm hold.

If your eyes were to roam over the twilight shining dunes, catching wisps of spirits picking up and dancing in the sand, you would know. You would understand the sprawling nothing that stretches before you. Like a great cat mid-slumber, dreaming of its latest catch, talons clinging to the fringes of civilization. If you listened close enough you could hear the great creature breathing, many lungs heaving and dropping with a gust of wind. Skin crawling with unrest. For such a creature was never meant to be dormant. It was never meant to be caged by cities and roads. And if you stretched out your senses, just a fraction before your noses towards it, you could feel it there.

The anger.

The anger of a wolf denied its prey. The anger of a disturbed hornet’s nest. The fury to dwarf the rage any man could fit in his heart. For this rage spans miles and miles over the vast emptiness of the desert. This rage waits, lurking past the dunes to ensnare you. Dry you up and dissolve you into powder. Take from you’re your hope, your faith, and your life. Take what you have to feed it’s anger, feed it until one day this mighty beast raises it’s shriveled head and roars into the sky of the civilized present to grind darkened thoughts in the mind of every man, women and child. It would speak to them all, and utter merely one phrase.

I am still here.
But for now, you stand watching it. As if watching a lion at the zoo; complacent. Almost welcoming you with the beauty of the sun setting over the sandy hills, alighting the sky with such vibrancy of colors the likes of which you have never seen. Beckoning you to tread it’s back in search of your purpose, in search of your goal.

All the while grinning, Cheshire in it’s malice, and angelic in the simple innocence of it, as if certain there is something it knows – and you do not. As if the goal you seek is not on it’s great back at all – but behind rows and rows of glimmering teeth.