Dispatches from the Trenches – Week 1

NaNoWriMo 2012The NaNo War has begun.

I’ve been here since the writing began a week ago. Most of us are still in the thick of it. Some are waiting for inspiration. Others have thrust themselves headlong into the fray, hoping for a chance to make a run of it and achieve victory. It’s been hell.

At kickoff, I met several of my fellow WriMos. Some were veterans I knew from previous wars, but we also had some green recruits. Things looked promising. But that was before the writing began.

The horror. Dear God, the horror.

It started at the stroke of midnight on All Hallow’s Eve. Like staccato gunfire, the room filled with the click-clack, click-clack of two dozen keyboards. Some poor souls wrote long-hand, and when I saw them I pitied them for I knew they wouldn’t last long.

After a week, it’s clear who has my back in a word sprint. There’s a camaraderie among those of us who have climbed together hill after hill of words. We make our jokes, claiming we can keep our inner editor at bay, but late at night I still hear him yelling at me for such sloppy exposition.

Not all of my friends from kickoff have made it this far. Some were lost before we began. I imagine them, stranded in the mud of their manuscripts. Face down. In the rain.

I didn’t get this far by being good. I’m just a grunt who knows he’s in it for the long hall. It’s not about the war, it’s about the battles. And I’m winning them, one thousand, six hundred, and sixty-seven words at a time.

This is it for now. I can’t afford many more words, as they are so precious. I have to conserve them. For the war.

K. Wohler
Lawrence, KS

Kevin Wohler is a copywriter and novelist living in Lawrence, Kansas. During the day, he works at a digital marketing agency in the Kansas City area. When time remains, he likes to tell stories of the weird and bizarre. And sometimes, he writes them down for others to read.

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