The funny thing about November and Nanowrimo is that the days keep passing whether we sit down to write or not. This post finds us already eleven days into the challenge of writing 50,000 words in only 30 days. We’re almost at the halfway point! I’ve never struggled to write that many words in the past so this year I wanted to mix things up a bit and challenge myself to write 72,500 words – or about 2,500 words per day, minus Thanksgiving.

Is it working? Well, not so much. I mean, I’m managing to stay afloat but it’s more taxing than I’d banked on and some days I produce over 4,000 words while other days I spend more time staring at the computer than I actually spend writing. But heck, that’s what Nanowrimo is all about, right?

By the 30th, I’ll have more than 50,000 words. I’ll be a Nanowrimo winner as far as the official challenge is concerned. Will I step up to the plate and answer my own challenge to write 72,500? Well, probably not … but it’s early days yet so we’ll see.

In the meantime, it’s one of our favorite days of the week – Six Sentence Sunday! And without exception, I have returned to share a snippet of my madness. Cassie, our 17 year-old runaway, has found herself mixed up with a potentially dangerous fugitive named Ben that kidnapped her in order to ensure a passage across the country to find the girl that might be able to save him from a bleak fate. Cassie has no reason to trust or to like her kidnapper but she finds herself drawn to him…

***

She knew she shouldn’t care about him, especially under the circumstances, and she hadn’t known him long enough to think of him as anything other than a monster, but still, she just couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She wanted to know why she sat there with him in this moment because whatever that reason may have been, it felt somehow pre-ordained.

“How will you get your guarantee?” she whispered. He looked at her for a long time and a strange understanding passed between them that she couldn’t put into words.

“I don’t know yet.”

“What kind of kidnapper are you?”

***

According to spell check, “pre-ordained” is not actually a word. Hmmm… Really? Have I gone that crazy already?

At any rate, whatever sort of kidnapper Ben may be, it’s clear that things will get shaken up a bit for both of them this November, even if I have to make up lots of new words to do it.

Thanks for stopping by and sampling my six. Be sure to hop over to the main Six Sentence Sunday website and check out the other participants as well.

Until we meet again…