50,000 words. One month. Observed every November, National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing! Participants begin writing on November 1st. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30th.
In November 2015, this international project to encourage writing and creativity inspired 56 people in Yuma to participate. Almost 2 million words were written, and 28 writers finished their goal of writing 50,000 words. With the ratio of participants and words written, our Yuma group was one of the top 50 regions in the world!
Please enjoy the following excerpts from NaNoWriMo 2015.
Title: Where Did They Go?
Author: A. Nation
Description: Have you ever put something down and later returned to find it gone? Then as mysterious as the item had disappeared, it returns where you had left it. Could it be a strange force in the universe or is someone real taking and bringing back your possessions? Susan was devastated when her husband dies in a car accident. Friends and family cannot fill the void left in her heart from his passing. Missing items, one after another, keeps disappearing around her home until she steps into another world. The characters she encounters help her with lost memories until she realizes who killed her husband.
Excerpt:
Then in horror I watched a car break through the side railing and fly out over the rushing waters. It hovered in the air for the longest time until it hit the churning liquid with a tremendous splash. For a few moments the auto floated, and I could see someone inside pounding against the inside of the driver’s window, trying to escape. Like a hungry monster, the river swallows the car with the occupant until the man inside could no longer be seen.
I jump into the river, hoping I could reach the drowning person, but the waters were too swift.
It was then that I sat up in my bed drenched with sweat.
I sat down in one of the blue living room chairs and looked at the picture of my late mother. She used to be my rock too. Then I watched in horror as a ‘hand’ came out from nowhere and took my mother’s picture, frame and all. It was gone as fast as it came. I began screaming and screaming, then everything went black.
Title: The Woman Behind the Mask
Author: Christine Howard
Excerpt:
Few in the general public see the inside of an Operating Room, at least not the real inner workings of one. They get their view from some show on television. It always drives me nuts when I see a supposed surgeon scrubbing his hands outside an Operating room and he is talking to another person “WITH NO MASK ON!” You would never see this in a real operating suite-no one would be without a mask.