The DeAubreyDigest

You don’t let your girlfriend near your laptop while you’re writing.  The end.

Meredith nodded.  “Yea, ever since his accident.”

“Accident?”

Maki frowned at Meredith.  “I hadn’t told her about that.”

“Well, it happened.  Why shouldn’t you?”

He started to answer and was cut off.  “What accident?” Jade asked, leaning toward Meredith.

“He was shot on school grounds because some asshole decided it would be a good idea,” she told her with a shrug of one shoulder.  “Really and honestly–”

Maki tuned back out again, focusing his attention inward and tried to search for the little beacon of light that was Leala.  Everyone had a different color and intensity and sometimes their light was very small, but everyone he had come into contact with had a light he could think about, trace through the aether and pinpoint.  Sometimes it took him awhile, but he could always track someone down and once he touched their essence, he could generally have a good idea where they were.  He traced around the different pinpoints closest to him, followed their tendrils that linked them to other people and let his energy lick at theirs before he wandered on.  When he finally found her, the light that was generally a very bright star had dwindled down and appeared very dim despite the large size it generally held.  Frowning, he mentally reached out and stroked the light.

A deep, searing pain spiked through his head and Maki reached up, clutching his head as he reeled back.  Meredith was immediately on her feet and reaching across the table to him and talking very fast.  He couldn’t focus on anything except the intense pain, his eyes blurred with the intensity of it.  Immediately he reached out for Meredith to find a steady hand and when his hand closed over her forearm, he could pull back from the pain.  Once his vision stopped swimming and their eyes met, she frowned.  “What’s wrong?”

“Lea.  We gotta find Lea.”  Up from the bench, Maki stumbled out of the cafeteria and then he said fuck this noise and apparated to the Weasley’s hut and boned Ginny.

She went there.  She completely frigging went there.  I DO NOT WRITE HARRY POTTER FANFICTION GODDAMNIT!!

To anyone who may be reading this journal:

I am participating this year in the NaNoWriMo competition once again and have decided to be an Municipal Liaison for my neck of the woods.  I’ve decided to post my story as I write from start to finish.  There are several reasons for this.  One: I believe it is important to many writers and not just WriMos to see that a story, book, or whatever is not a polished work the minute it leaves your fingers to the keyboard.  There is a LOT of crap that makes NO SENSE at all if the reader were to sit down and actually write.  I want others to know that we’re not putting down 50,000 words of perfect manuscript to page and will be ready to hit the publisher with it come December.

That’s why there’s editing month.

Two: WordPress, as pointed out to me by the lovely Killishandria, has a word counter at the bottom of the page that gives you a word count every time you stop typing and it saves the draft.  This will be extremely helpful once I start having word count goals to attain and don’t want to have to keep hitting the word count button every five minutes to see if I can stop writing for the day.  This takes a little of that pressure off and does it for me.  Not to mention it backs things up again if we end up losing something due to power outage or a keyboard full of coffee.  Which has happened to me once before.

Three: Accountability.  There have been several WriMos who have said they do prewriting.  There have been WriMos who have said to me that they have included things that were previously written in order to bump their word counts.  I like to know that what I do and what I have done is fair as far as beginning a story November 1st and finishing 50,000 words by the 30th.  If I’m posting it here as I get it done, it’s sort of proof that I’m doing it a little at a time and not cheating or blowing smoke.  I’m actually doing this and writing and making myself get over my humps.

I’ve also not been writing to save up the juices for November.  So a lot of my writing has been on hold, not just the story for the WriMo, so I can keep the flow bottled and let it spew in those first few weeks.  I already know how I want the story to start.  It’s just getting where I need to go that’s the problem.  I haven’t gotten that all planned out yet.

So here’s to November that is only 11 days away at this point.

Baby made the trip home without passing out, draping himself over the doorframe of a small house and knocking to be let in.  He didn’t have long to wait before a short, redheaded woman opened the door, saw who it was, noted he was hurt and drug him inside.

“I’m not gonna ask whatever it is ya did t’yerself t’get this way, I’m just gonna dig it out an’ send ya home t’yer momma,” she threatened, pushing Baby toward a chair.  “Clyde, eat yer dinner.”

The redheaded boy at the small table was picking at his food, waiting until she had bustled off to another room before he slipped from the table and knelt beside Baby’s chair with a concerned look.  “What happened?” he asked quietly, reaching up and touching the older boy’s shoulder.  Baby winced.

“Did somethin’ stupid,” he commented bitterly.  “Shouldn’t have gotten involved but I did and now I might be in some serious trouble.  I just need your mom to dig this bullet out of here for me so I can go to work tonight.  I might not be around much so I don’t get you in trouble with me.”  He looked in the direction Mary Sigan had gone and his eyes flicked back to Clyde.  “Especially with as much as your momma hates Turks.”

Green eyes widened.  “Baby, what did you do?”

He shook his head.  “Threw a rock an’…”  He stopped as Mary came back with an armload of supplies and battled at Clyde to get out of the way.  He went back to the table and picked at his dinner a little more.  The conversation could wait until later.

“I’m not gonna ask what ya did,” she repeated as she tugged at his shirt.  “Get this off so I can get a good look at it.”

Baby obediently skinned out of his shirt, dropping it on the floor beside him.  The woman’s eyes closed and she shook her head, muttering something under her breath.  “Here, swig this an’ then bite down on this.”  The first was a bottle of whisky and the second was a strap of leather.  Baby took a healthy swallow of the amber liquid, his breath stolen as the burn set in and he nearly dropped the cork for the top.  He handed it back to her and tucked the strap between his teeth.  He tucked his left hand under his leg to keep it from jerking and his right hand gripped the arm of the chair hard.  With a single nod, he turned away, staring toward the door of the house as she cleaned the wound enough to even see what was going on.

“Yer damned lucky it didn’t hit somethin’ vital, Baby Boy,” she groused, rubbing at the damaged skin with a swab.  “A few centimeters in either way an’ you’d’ve bled out ‘fore ye ever got here.”  She worked quickly, obviously not the first bullet she’d dug out of somebody.  Once she realized the bullet had lodged back by his shoulderblade, she cursed rather loudly and turned over her shoulder.  “Clyde, run an’ grab the long tweezers outta the cabinet.”

Without a word he was on his feet, bringing them back as soon as he’d located them.  She doused them in a bowl with alcohol and iodine while she carefully held the skin back.  “How far back were ye from the shooter, eh?”

“He was in a building. I was on the street.”  Each word was ground out around the strap, the nerves singing as she worked.

“What did you do??” she asked, eyes flicking up at him before she picked up the tweezers.  “On second thought, don’t answer that.”  Not giving him time to respond, she went in for the bullet.

Baby clamped down on the leather, his throat clenching hard as a scream threatened to roll forward.  Although she hadn’t, he swore to all things Holy that she’d just jabbed the things in there and was rooting for buried gold.  When she bumped it, he knew, growling like a wild animal around the tightly clenched teeth that barely held in a primal scream.  Okay, so this hurt a hell of a lot more than he ever thought it would.  Actually getting shot hadn’t hurt as much as getting the damned bullet out again.  At least he’d had adrenaline going to counteract the pain of actually being shot.  That had just been like being stung by the mother of all wasps and went numb not long afterward.  It hadn’t started throbbing until he’d managed to get back on the train and as long as he focused on breathing he was fine until he’d gotten to Mary’s.

The tweezers closed around the bullet and she pulled it out, checking it over to see if there were fragments that could be missing.  Cursing loudly, she went back in again, feeling for the pieces she was missing.

The first time he could handle it.  The second dive drained all the color from his face.  Thankfully Clyde had been paying attention and scooted around his mother to catch him as he lost consciousness.

When he finally clawed his way out of the wet blanket that left him with a horrible headache and feeling nauseous, he could hear Mary having a rather heated discussion with someone at the front door.  He wasn’t in the front room anymore.  Someone had carried him into one of the bedrooms.  Without thinking, he reached up and touched his shoulder, immediately regretting the impulse as pain seared through his chest and down his arm.  At least now he had feeling down his arm.  Before he’d been worried it had severed something.  Clumsily he flexed the fingers of his left hand and wiggled them around before he sat up, clutching his head as it swam and tried to regain his sense of upright before he stood and ambled out to the front room to find out what was going on.

Standing in the doorway were two men in dark suits, sending Baby scurrying back behind the doorway in the kitchen to stay out of sight.  They’d tracked him here.  Damn, he’d probably left them a fucking blood trail all the way to the house!  Stupid!

Feeling a presence behind him, Baby wheeled back and almost knocked into Clyde.  “What’d ya do that ya got Turks after ya?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“I threw a rock at the President,” Baby answered, turning to peek back out at the men Mary was fending off.  “I threw a rock to keep him from getting shot and I bet they think I’m an accomplice or something.  Fuck.  I shouldn’t have come here.”

“If you hadn’t you woulda bled to death,” Clyde answered, rolling his eyes.  “Don’t worry about it, momma’s got it covered.  She’ll get rid of ‘em and you can get out of here and go home.”

Somehow he didn’t think that was the end of it, but he figured if there was any time to beat a hasty retreat, it was now.  “I gotta go, Clyde.  I’ll see you in a couple of weeks if they don’t grab me first.”  Giving him a quick peck on the lips, something they’d done since they were little, Baby turned and ran back to the bedroom and ducked out the window, taking off down the street.

The sun was entirely too bright up here and no manner of shielding his eyes ever came close to cutting the glare of the rays in his eyes.  Holding a hand over his brows, he looked around the shining buildings with gleaming windows and sparkling skies full of whispy white clouds and over the small expanses of grass and brown earth looking as though it could use a little rain to sprout more growth.  The buildings were taller here than he’d thought they would be, not that they compared to Shinra tower, but they were still higher than most of the buildings still under the plate.

Since he’d left the train, Baby had spent a lot of time looking up at things, seeing the sky and the sun and the people who were in lawn chairs atop buildings to watch President Shinra speak.  It was to be a rather momentous occasion, the unveiling of some big product for whatever new thing the company had produced but Baby didn’t know what it was.  He just wanted an excuse to spend money, take the train and get out in the sun for awhile and this was as good an excuse as any.  Finding a good place to lie back without being trampled, he dropped down onto the ground and lay back to soak up the rays, watching the building tops sway with the heat.

He didn’t budge until the bustle of the street picked up around him and he pulled himself up to find something to eat.  After a few minutes he found a rolling cart with hot dogs and picked one up for more than it was worth, but since it was the cheapest thing around, he took it and ate it eagerly, picking a new place to stand and watch as the stage was populated by a few people checking over last minute details.  A band began playing and rousing the crowd that had gathered around the stage.  A dull roar filled the courtyard as people chatted amongst themselves, drowning out specific words in favor of a full, wavelike sound as voices rose and fell.  Baby finished off the last bite, sucking the ends of his fingertips before wiping his hand off on his pants and looked over the single podium and the black suited men who walked out onto the stage along the back in a row, most likely some sort of defense for the President.

After a few minutes the fanfare swelled and two men entered the stage, followed by the President and his young son and then closed by two more bodyguards.  As the President took the stage, the band continued playing, the director waiting for a signal to stop so he could begin his no doubt well practiced speech.  The crowd gained a little intensity, all expectantly turned to the stage and pressing in for a better view.  Baby kept toward the back along the curb, quite a distance away from the procession and the hum of the crowd.  He enjoyed people watching.  People were funny creatures and he liked watching families interacting with one another and strangers speaking to one another and pulling away to form other cliques in the mass of moving bodies.

A flash of light drew his attention, probably from a mirror.  At that angle, though, he knew it had to be coming from somewhere.  He skimmed along the crowd and along the buildings to the tops where several people were still sitting and standing.  None of them appeared to have anything that would make the little shining flicker he saw.  His eyes continued roving, turning back to the stage to try and follow the angle it might have come from when a small dot appeared on the President who had taken his place at the podium.  As soon as it flashed, it was gone again.

Baby wasn’t stupid.  He knew well enough when someone was drawing a bead.  His eyes flicked to the building he’d been staring at all morning, catching just a hint of a man who might be up to something.  The barrel was along the windowsill, a second man kneeling and staying low.  Blue eyes flashed between the man and the President and to the men standing around him.  None of them were even aware.  An entire crowd of people were about to watch a man be shot and killed and his guards weren’t even aware.

If he shouted he’d be ignored, unable to be heard over the crowd.  Trying to run to the stage from this distance to tell someone would take too much time.  His thoughts raced faster, grasping at straws until dancing eyes touched on a broken chunk of the curbing.  No more time to think.  The barrel of the gun in the window shifted, the man getting in position.  The band was dying down.  There was the three second bead before it flashed off again.  No more time.  Act or let a man die. Baby picked up the chunk of concrete and hurled it, hoping his aim was true.

Right on the mark, the chunk struck him in the head, two of the Turks grabbing him and pulling him down just as the first shot rang out, hitting one of the Turks who was in a direct line behind the President.  Two of the men spied Baby, following where the flying chunk had come from.  Baby danced back, eyes wide.  He hadn’t thought about what would happen when they figured out what he’d done.  Nobody would believe him if he told them what happened.  His eyes flicked back up to the window, eyes widening impossibly when he saw the gun pointed in his direction, the man not bothering to still hide.  Baby ducked and ran to the side, sending the two Turks running from the stage after him.  Another shot rang out, barely missing the boy as he turned back up at the shooter and held his arms out.  If the Turks came for him, they’d see where the shot had come from.

Pulling with his fingers, he egged the shooter on, knowing there was no way in hell he could have the devil’s luck again.  The two suited men were nearly atop of him when another shot rang out, Baby dodging again and nowhere near as lucky this time as before.  The shot nailed him in the shoulder, knocking him onto his back.  Both Turks turned and spun, one of them drawing a handgun and taking a shot at the man in the window.  The second of the men was gone, but the shooter took a direct hit, crumpling over the windowsill.  Baby, on the other hand, took the opportunity to get back to his feet and run like hell.  There was no way in hell he was letting any suit get their hands on him.  He was not going down as an accomplice.

While reading one of the classics today at work, I decided to do a little counting. The average of three chapters was ten pages long, front only. Each line had an average of 10 words each. By counting the lines and doing some VERY rough figuring, an average chapter runs around 5,000 words. At this rate Baby’s story would only be about 50 pages long. It’s rather humbling to look at other author’s accomplishments and realize how far I have to go.

NaNoWriMo, I hear you calling.