On the (Twenty-)Seventh Day He Rested (NaNoWriMo November 28th)

This post has nothing to do with increasing NaNoWriMo word count, and everything to do with recharging the writing batteries.

Yesterday evening, I had dinner with a group of people who, while not WriMos, are all creative, ambitious, intelligent and hands-on with the world. For once, my spouse was not the only person in the room telling interesting stories.

For example: one is an artist who makes something of a living creating neat stuff for Burning Man attendees, people who want to be there and join in, but do not have the time or creative juices for a Burning-Man type of artwork. However, she currently is mapping "urban wildlife" (principally feral cats, it appears) and catching them on strategically-placed cameras.

Her description prompted another, an architectural designer married to an architectural engineer, to tell the tale of how their extremely rural tent camp, with field cameras placed to record game incursions, caught the son of a local driving his truck well past the 'No Trespassing' signs on their property.

An alarm automatically lit the lights in their house-sized tent, which blazed suddenly out of the darkness, causing the young man to flip a U-turn and get caught a second time on the game camera. Neither of them were in residence at the camp, but their handy-man, my spouse's nephew, downloaded the camera file, recognized the truck, and confronted its driver—gently—the next day in town. "Never happen again!" the young man swore.

Two of the ladies had gone on a walking tour in Greece this summer, and had much to tell about learning to be laid back and just experience the Greek Isles. 

One of our hosts abruptly left the conversation, walked outside, and came back again to announce that he had spotted, on the hillside across the lake, "Six pigs and eight deer." He went on to relate how the Corps of Engineers had decided to declare several pig shoots on the property uphill from the dam that impounds the lake, because the non-native porkers are causing an increase in the sediment load coming into the impoundment, shortening the life of the dam.

Finally, just before I began to write in earnest for my NaNovel today, I ran across the intriguing Flash Fiction challenge from Carrot Ranch: 

In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story using two objects, people or ideas that don’t go together. Anything random like wine and gasoline; the Archangel Michael and Marilyn Monroe; granny and rehab; horses and church bells. Then write a story about your two dissonant picks. Use your two objects as the title.

I thought I had run across demanding story concepts before this, but I've tried everything. Nothing will suit but to drop Indigo Redemption (briefly) and write a 99-word Flash Fiction.

So chalk it up to a "rejuvenating holiday", but I won't be writing anything more on my novel today. I'll have to be content with the little I wrote before breakfast!

Total: 53,876 words.