I'm stalled out on my NaNoNovel, so I've started a diversion.

I think it's fun. I've decided to write an old-school Narnia-type children's book where the children neither talk nor behave like real children. Here's the opening. (Special shout-out to Andrew Najberg for the idea of people suddenly finding a lot of blood in their house.)

Chapter One, In which There is a Great Deal of Blood.

Thomas and Zooey tromped from the school bus with their usual end-of-the-day lack of verve and pluck. They scuffed gracelessly up the walk to the front door and, in his usual manner, Thomas shoved the door open unceremoniously. The school day was over, and laziness could at last begin.

Except that the living room was completely covered in blood.

"Oh my," Zooey remarked.

"That is quite a lot of blood," Thomas said.

Zooey nodded in agreement. "It does appear to be a great deal of blood."

Thomas and Zooey stared in silence at the gory tableau. The walls were spattered in crimson; the floors were puddled in scarlet. Unidentifiable chunks of macabre red clung to suede couch and the cream-colored venetian blinds. It was, indeed, a great deal of blood.

"I confess that the presence of so much blood and the apparent lack of our parents does not sit well with me," Zooey said at last. She twisted one of her auburn curls nervously around her slender index finger and frowned.

"It troubles me as well, sister of mine." Thomas strained his ears. "And the house is much quieter than normal."

"Perhaps eerily so?" Zooey suggested.

"Eerily, yes. Like a horror movie," Thomas admitted.

Neither one of them moved.

"Oh!" Thomas said brightly, as if a cheerful idea just occurred to him. Oftentimes the greatest comfort in the face of the unknown comes from within one's own mind, and it was so in this case. "I bet this is fake blood," Thomas explained. "This situation is so like a horror movie because it is a trick put on by our parents. After all, it is uncommon to come home to a room covered in blood."

Zooey looked at the room doubtfully, her brow furrowed. "It looks awfully real." She pinched her nose. "And it smells weird. Coppery."

this is pretty neat: you paste in as much text as you want, and it gives back a graphical representation of the word frequencies, minus common words like "the" and "of", and you can even turn these on if you want. it also, when you run it yourself, gives a tabulated list of all the word frequencies. here's one derived from Part 1 of my story, "Automatic for the People!"

50,484 words! Victory!

i've done it! five months and 50,000 words!

two more short chapters (32 done already) and Part 1 will be finished, basically. one chapter of Part 2 is already written.

i've figured out most of the rest of the story. i think it's all downhill from here, at least in figuring out what happens next. sitting and writing it is the hard part. i estimate 25,000 words for Part 2? i wish it were less...

i think it's a good story. if no one ever reads it, i'm still glad to have done it. it's at least as fun as actually reading a book; even better i think.

anyway.