Writing Project

NaNoWriMo is almost upon us. I was not planning to take the challenge to write a 175 page novel during the month of November (mostly because that's faster than I normally work), but another blog post I read somewhere recommended writing the final 200 words of your book first (aimed at mystery writers, I think). Anyway, follows is exactly the last two hundred words of the NaNoWriMo book I will write in November:

Having done wasted your time searching through the company’s financial records for the past one hundred seventy-four pages, Bob suddenly realized that he would never solve the murder that way and would therefore fail to make the leap from accounting to super-sleuth. He reevaluated the situation and a horrifying reality dawned upon him; technically, nobody had been killed. Bob’s course was clear.

Grabbing his trusty flamesaw from beneath his desk, he vaulted over the cubicle wall and stormed into his supervisor’s office.

"Wait," the soon-to-be corpse wailed. "Luke! I mean, Bob! I am...your father."

Bob unleashed hell and grim death upon the man, splattering his insides all over the office walls in what looked like an icky-poo Rorschach card. Bob’s supervisor’s severed right hand landed in an open wicker basket filled gems stolen from an ancient Egyptian burial site. Unbeknownst to Bob, the gems carried a terrible curse that proclaimed "if ever should a bloody severed hand be lain upon these pretty shiny things then, well, something super bad will happen." A multitude of hell bats, bologna sandwiches clutched in their talons, descended from the heavens and attacked a nearby filing cabinet because it was haunted. The floor ruptured and

THE END

200 words exactly (not counting THE END). Now all I have to do is spend November writing the 1st 174 pages with tales of how Bob failed to solve the as-then uncommitted murder by searching through the company's financial records. I think I'll write some code to generate the following:

{P} Bob opened record number {RecordNumber = RecordNumber + 1} and scanned the contents. It was as he feared - the records were full of numbers, some of which were really long and were not conveniently rounded to the nearest dollar. "Curses," Bob cursed, and withdrew his trusty calculator. Adding columns A through K, he found they equalled {Random.(TotalAmount); format = $#,###.##}, which was the correct amount for record number {RecordNumber}. He stuffed his calculator back into his pocket and moved to the next file, more determined than ever to find the killer. {/P}

I'll have that novel written in an hour. But seriously, kids - evaluate every bit of writing advice carefully, no matter who or where it comes from. What works is what works for you.

Literary, out