NaNoWriMo: Day 7 outtakes (catching up ... and a hint of conflict)

Passed the 10,000 mark tonight, but I'm still a day behind. But that's what weekends (esp. Saturday morning cartoons as far as the kids are concerned) are for! We'll all be happy soon ...

Today is the one-week mark and I've said "blood" in today's text and my main character has even wielded a knife. Plus, I kept to a story line and, inspired by Day 5's comments, I experimented with injecting a bit more assertiveness into my main chickadee rather than keeping with the somewhat accidental heroine vein I'd been following. I'll experiment around with this newfound boldness for a few days and see how it works, but will also be open to returning the original vision or looking for some sort of cross-pollination of ideas to occur.

But before I get to excerpts, I gotta say ... not sure how anything I made up today can beat the reality of seeing a balding Superman hanging out across the street from my office today, paying a little too much attention to the soda can he was cradling. In fact, he even lit the can a few times. Kind of like he was smoking it, like a giant doobie ... Draw your own conclusion. His cape was pretty impressive though. He had a Superman shirt, too. Not quite sure what kind of undercover he was going for. Surprised he didn't run into some other undercover folks ...

And back to business ... since you didn't get any actual excerpts yesterday (though you should really check out the music videos I linked to), here's three biggies:

Early Day 7 excerpt: Moments ago she’d shivered at this strange man’s presence. Now … now she felt like she could break his neck with a look. And she kinda wanted to try. As they made eye contact, it seemed he thought she might too. Liz reached for the vial. Davin seemed to resist for a moment but then let her take it. Over and over she turned it, feeling the cool of the glass, imagining almost a pulsating power within. Color had returned to her face and her eyes betrayed her increasing craving for mischief.

Mid-evening excerpt: “Have you ever wondered what fear smells like?” the man she hunted gasped. Liz stiffened a bit, but remained silent. “Like acid. In your nose, your brain. It feels like jagged ice ... and smells like acid in your head.” His speech was more mutterings than sense. More ramble than real. He was quickly becoming delirious. “I think you need some air,” Liz calmly cooed, taking his hand and leading him to the front door as if they were doing nothing more than calling it a night. The confused and undiagnosed terror in his face was easily mistaken for drunken idiot. As they stepped outside, the man stared, practically paralyzed, into the headlights of his fate.

Final graph of the day: Liz was less than pleased. She fumbled for the knife she’d hidden within her costume and crept toward the two figures with purpose. Davin and George didn’t even notice her until she’d placed the blade of her 6-inch dagger insistently against Davin’s neck. “Imminent, you say? Like a cold dagger?” She pressed harder, and drew the cutting edge slowly across his meaty cheek. Her heart echoed more feverishly beneath her garment’s constraints as she made her demands known. A thin line of blood rose to fill the void. George’s terror only grew with his proximity to Liz and the reality unfolding before him. “I think there’s more you need to tell me," she instructed Davin as she kept the blade pressed against him. "Now."