NaNo Madness Flash Fiction

While I haven’t been doing NaNoWriMo this year, a lot of my writer friends have been busy working toward writing 50,000 words this month—the equivalent of a short novel. The YA Buccaneers decided to do a Flash Fiction prompt with NaNo in mind this month, and have given everyone TWO options for completing the challenge.

The first is to write a short 200-word story that begins with “I walked as quietly as I could into the room”, and ends with “That’s when I realized I knew”.  Both of these prompts are included in the word count, and the idea is open to writing anything you like as long as it contains the sentence fragments.  Lots of fun, as usual.

However, this month, the choice is yours.  If you don’t feel like adding MORE to your heavy writing goals, how about sharing 200 words from your NaNo manuscript? (If you’re not doing NaNo, that’s okay. You can post a selection from your current WIP instead!) This will also count toward earning an extra entry into our monthly draw, which is a signed hardcover copy of Cristin Terrill’s ALL OUR YESTERDAYS!

All of the info on how to enter the great giveaway this month is on the YA Buccaneer’s blog, so make sure you check it out and follow the rules so that you’ll be included in the draw.

I’ve decided to use my current WIP (that stands for work-in-progress, Mom), which I’m calling I ONCE WAS LOST.  I haven’t done an official synopsis for this yet, but: After losing his sight in a freak accident, the world is a difficult place for sixteen-year-old Jay Duncan to traverse. He longs for his old friends, a regular school, and a chance to continue his popular webcomic, LAZY BOY.  But when he suddenly gains his vision back, he discovers maybe the life he had isn’t everything he thought it was.

The first 200 words……

“The last thing I ever saw was the back of my Uncle Murray’s head. Lucky me, huh?”

 I wish it’d been something good, anything good, like a sweltering summer afternoon at Bayview Beach with cute girls lounging around in their itty-bitty bikinis. That’s something I could’ve taken with me. But nope. My last visual was stringy salt and pepper hair that needed a wash. I say it because she wants to know, but I can’t get it to surface. Nothing makes it there anymore. I’m a TV with no picture.

Kate jots something in her notebook. “I can think of worse things.”

She probably can, being in the journalism businesses. Okay, so she only writes for “The Women’s Daily Bread”—not exactly “Afghanistan Weekly”—but I’m sure she’s heard it all. Mom told me she did a piece about some guy who had his leg bitten off by a shark. It’s one of the reasons I let her start this whole interview thing in the first place. She’s not afraid of getting down in the trenches, which is good, ‘cause I’ve spent a lot of time there lately.”