Hey all, Sam here.
It’s Friday. It’s the last day of March. And I’m in the mood to write, which is pretty darn great. Especially since Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. I currently have a goal set for 25,000 words to be written in April for Tale of Blood and Mourning. But I’m feeling like I want to work on a couple different projects, so we’ll see what I can accomplish in April.
My plan is to check in each week for our WIP Wednesday posts with an actual word count number on my writing projects during Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve thought about doing daily updates on my Twitter, but I don’t know about that….I don’t always write every single day.
Anyway, based on my goal of 25,000 words for Camp NaNoWriMo, I need to write roughly 833 words per day…which is certainly doable. Back when I was writing regularly, so mostly back in my college days or the couple years after college, I usually wrote a couple thousand words a day, and during NaNoWriMo I would actually write up to 10,000 words in a day.
I miss those days.
Before I get into any of the prompt sharing, I’m already trying to figure out which book to next focus on for the Weekend Writer deep dives. Yes, I still have three chapters of The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings to get through, which will take all of April, but starting in May I’ll be diving into a new book, and I’m having difficulty deciding which one to choose.
Here’s the three I’m looking at: The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Jessica Brody based on the books by Blake Snyder, or Writing With Emotion, Tension, & Conflict: Techniques for Crafting an Epressive and Compelling Novel by Cheryl St. John.
If any of these books sound like one you’d want me to tackle with these Weekend Writer posts, let me know!
All right, I guess it’s time to finally get into the prompt sharing portion of today’s post. You can find all of the March prompts here. I ended up choosing the Crow Oracle Deck prompt option, which I’ll include again now.
The cards pulled for this prompt are: Scavenge, Battle, Influence.
Now, I went a bit vague on this one…mostly because it led to me wanting to write something that I already knew would turn into at minimum a novella but more likely a novel. I still don’t have a title for this project, which is weird, because normally I at least have some sort of a working title, but I don’t yet. And I only have the vaguest idea what is going to happen with this story. All I really have are the two main characters. The rest…well, I guess I’ll figure it out as I go.
The scream tore its way out of my throat, a low painful keening that echoed through the cavernous tunnel. I hated when this happened, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Even retreating into solitude was not enough to escape the cry of death. This place should have been far enough away from the chaos and the warfront, but apparently I was mistaken on that assumption.
Death wails were completely unpredictable and this one was a long one, the sound continuous and building through the tunnel echoes, creating an eerie symphony that was both haunting and beautiful.
Two minutes later, the cry finally dwindled and ended, and I found myself free to breathe again. It was time to leave here, find somewhere else to go. This cave, while not particularly comfortable or cozy, had been like a home the past couple weeks.
Outside there were the sounds of clanging and thunking and shouts. The fighting had moved closer, and a lot faster than I had expected. That meant it was absolutely time for me to find somewhere else to stay. It was bad enough to be in a city or a town, but to be near fighting…well, the banshee wails would be too much, too frequent.
Perhaps a little sadly, it only took a couple minutes to grab my few meager possessions and shove them in my knapsack. All my life, everything I owned, and it all fit in such a small bag.
“Maeve…run!”
It was like the voice echoed through the cave, bouncing off the walls and reaching my ears, as memorable now as it had been two years ago, shortly after the first time the banshee wail had burst from me. That was definitely the sign that I needed to leave. Even staying to grab my things was pressing my luck in a dangerous way.
I swiftly kicked some dirt over the small fire burning in my temporary home, and rushed towards the mouth of the cave and casting my gaze to the surroundings. Yes, there was definitely a battle happening. Unfortunately, as it was nearing sunset, everything was disrupted by growing shadows and increasing darkness. I couldn’t tell which armies were involved. All I could tell was that it was brutal.
That explained the death cry then. Certainly many would fall in this battle, and it would be too late to bring them to the healers, too late to do much more than cry over their bodies, perhaps give a battlefield service to them, before sending a missive back to their families.
Searching for an opening where I could slip out and escape the chaos, I instead found myself locked on to a figure shrouded in both dark and light, dancing through the chaos like some sort of carrion, a harbinger of death and destruction. Whether she was there to influence the outcome or to scavenge from the remains…well, I didn’t know if I wanted to know the answer to that.
I needed to leave. And yet, I was frozen in place, just watching this figure. Come on, Maeve, I told myself. You need to go, now. Someone will be looking for you. Someone had to have heard my wail of death. Banshees were too valuable to ignore. I needed to go, now, before it was too late.
Well, that is all from me for today. Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to share some of your own writing or creative projects, whether that’s here or on social media (I’m @SamRushingBooks on Twitter and Instagram). I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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