(metrics) Day 8 metrics – a day later, but written on time

I don’t have internet at work, per se, so while I wrote these workds last night, I’m posting them now.

Starting Count: 79752
Ending Count: 81424
Net Gain: +1672
Current NaNo count: 14460
Current Word YTD count: 15556
Val’s Tea Fund: $8

Starting line:
Justin hesitated at Cleo’s door, hand half-raised to knock, listening with both ears and mind to the turmoil inside the room.

Ending line:
Without disturbing her, Justin raised his head a bit, so he could see the painting she’d been working on. It sat on the easel, only half-finished, but it disturbed him in a way that her other paintings hadn’t. Then again, he reasoned, he hadn’t seen more than the few paintings she’d worked on here. Maybe this is more representative of her style.

Darling:
It was, in a wild, haunted way. Like all her other paintings in the room, this one was a New England piece; he recognized the landscape immediately, if not the exact place. But rather than the fall scenes she’d been painting, this one was a winter scene, full of ice blues and silvers, snowflakes dancing in the background so lightly that he could almost feel the cold coming from the canvas. No house, not this time; Cleo had drawn instead a graveyard, an ancient ruin of tombstones and mausoleums, coated in snow and falling into disrepair. Rusty iron latticework fenced in the graves, and a faded wooden sign hung from one ring over the gate; Justin fancied he could hear the creaking as the wind blew past it.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.

(metrics) Writing day 9 – no NaNo words today

Today was an absolutely lost day in writing my NaNo, and I fully admit it. I couldn’t get myself into it, so I worked on Answers in the Wild, which is the short I’m working on for the EveryPhoto blog. I did, however, do morning pages and at least 250 words of fiction, so I’m still going strong on the 365 days of writing. And I’m not THAT far behind on NaNo.

starting count: 0
ending count: 487
new words: +487
Current NaNo count: 14460
Current Word YTD count: 16043
Val’s Tea Fund: $9

starting line:
A single leaf moved in the breeze, breaking away from its branch to drift by him as he hiked into the clear spring afternoon. He paused to follow its path, wondering yet again at his fascination in the natural world. Maybe it was because it still seemed unspoiled here, in the forest, even though he knew how tenuous the pristine nature really was. So fragile, so slave to the whims of human beings who felt they were masters of everything.

ending line:
“And I, you, Joseph,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder. He buried his face in her silky hair, inhaling the scent of lavender and sunlight that she always seemed exude. “It’s been a long thirty years.”

darling:
Another leaf drifted by him, green and so delicate that it caught his breath. It dropped into the ravine, down onto the roof of the car, and then drifted up and off again, taken by the crisp breeze that still spoke of snow in the upper elevations. Winter still held the peak in thrall, even as spring draped the slopes of the mountain in her emerald best.

Originally published at The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford. You can comment here or there.