National Novel Writing Month is, in my opinion, a month for discovery. You discover your limits, your time management proficiency (or lack thereof), your endurance, and your ability to perform under pressure.
Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I found out I have a superpower.
I can type in my sleep.
I’m sure most everyone out there has experienced staying up until the wee hours of the morning trying to finish a paper for school and conked out to find they left a letter smosh on the page the next morning. As it turns out, I can go on typing long after I’ve fallen asleep. And it sorta makes sense! The ideas are a little out in left field, and really disconnected, but the thing that shocked me the most was my grammar and syntax mainly stayed in tact.
I remember just being absolutely exhausted when I sat down to write that night. I had a long day at work and was under a lot of stress, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit and write, but I did it anyway. I remember fading in and out for the first couple of minutes, but there comes a point where I don’t remember anything and just went to bed. I sat down to write the next night and I went back to figure out where I left off, and this is what I found:
After what seemed like ages to Phillian, they entered the village. The houses were crammed close together in an effort to fit more people in the area, but the streets were left larger to allow for a prolific market day. As it so happened, it was market day.
The wide streets were packed with the village inhabitants. While the town didn’t cover a particularly large area, a fair amount of people swarmed the larger streets. Lined in the gutters were stands with colorful canopies filled with goods of all sorts. Brightly patterned fabrics were sold in one stall and watermelons in another. As the blacksmith lead Phillian past the stall full of the green striped fruit, Phillian’s eyes stuck to it a moment longer and he salivated a little bit. The writer mused a little bit as she wrote this. It looks like Phillian’s favorite watermelon is fruit. Vendors traded their goods with neighbors both in hard cash and in services. A watermelon for a bunch of bananas there. A house cleaning service for clean laundry. Several gold and silver pieces for a haunch of deer.
Phillian sturggled with spelling the word sturggled and struggled with keeping up with the blacksmith. The closer to the village green they got, the thicker the crowds were and the more children that ran underfoot. This caused Phillian to flinch both at the noise they made, but also at the seemingly intentional ability they had to tread on his toes as he walked. One watching from far away might say that the childeren’s aim for Phillian’s toes might be merited, as on occasion he allowed his bag to knock one or two particularly rambunctious ones in the head as he walked.
It took a little while to pass through the whole town to get to the green, but while Phillian fully expected them to take a stop there, he was surprised when the burly blacksmith walked right past it, through an alleyway towards the other side of the town. Phillian jogged awkwardly in an an attempt to keep up.
“Where are we going?” He asked the back of the bigger man.
“We are going to the farms.”
“What? Why aren’t we stopping at the green?”
“I have no idea. The writer seems to be sleep writing.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“It means the story really isn’t going to unfold, but everyone for some reason is going to get a new master.”
“What?” Phillian was very confused. Writer? What was this writer? This was all madness to him…a man of science and all that good stuff.
“We have some fixins to do.”
“Blacksmith, have you been drinking?”
“It’s possible. Now I’m going to beat you up and leave your helpless body in a ditch.”
Phillian crossed his eyes. “You probably shouldn’t do that, because if you do, this will need some major rewriting.”
The blacksmith smiled a kind of cross eyed smile. One eye wandered ina completely different direction and Phillian wondered if he was hallucinating. It was quite possible. Some of the plants he keeps in his glass house have spores that are lovely to take on walks. They can cause hallucinations and if distilled in the wrong hands can double as an aphrodisiac. Or not, cause that’s kind agross.
You know you silly person? You need some sleep. Phillian said.
The blacksmith thought long and hard about this fact. Yes, as it appears, so I would. Would you like to have a sleepover?
No. NO I wouldn’t. I’m a hermit, remember? There’s a no likey people problem over here and it starts wth the letter P, which also happens to be the letter of the day. I would hate to be the dentist for a dinosoar excavation that came to life. Do you know how much that would suck?
Phillian paused a moment to consider the lilies of the field and how they grow.
Okay. It’s probably to time to throw in the towel. This is not productive at all.
I laughed so hard I cried. It was a little startling to get a view into what my brain does when I’m asleep (and let me tell you, I’m pretty weirded out by it). All I can say is I’m so glad all of this gets filtered out in the day, otherwise, I might be regarded as a drunk or a lunatic, neither of which are actually accurate.
I’m totally keeping all this for my word count.
Happy NaNoing, guys!
ACE
The Plotter's Apprentice 