Day 20 of National Novel Writing Month

Daily insights from #nanowrimo with excerpts

By Emma Palova

EW Emma’s Writings

Lowell, MI – Today is the first day, you can validate and claim your winner of NaNoWriMo title, if you have logged in with 50,000 words of any genre of literature.

Today, I alternated between reporting from a township meeting for the Lowell Ledger and fiction writing of short stories. Yes, it can be done. I logged in with 39,358 words in the My Novel yellow box on the dashboard.

Takeaways

The most-valued takeaway from the #nanowrimo creative project is gauging your creative daily output measured by the widget in the dashboard.

The second insight is the fact that you can flip between the two categories of writing: non-fiction and fiction.

Excerpts from “40 Hunks”

Book cover for “Secrets” aka the Face of Gossip.

The list was far from being exact, but Jose knew once they entered the US territory, they would be assigned a permanent work guide. From there on, it was none of his business what’s going to happen with these men. The guides were correction officers borrowed from the regional correctional facilities in the US.

The border patrol in Nogales searched the smelly bus and studied Jose’s driver’s license and that piece of paper.

“How do you know who’s who?” barked a sweating guard with an AK47 across his shoulder, at Jose.

“Vaguely. I know that I have 40 men,” said Jose also sweating.

The guard boarded the bus and walked in the aisle examining each face, holding the piece of governmental paper in his hand. He stopped and looked closely at one man. The men were wide awake now. He leaned over the hulky man taking in his odor.

“Who are you?” he asked with his face distorted in an evil grimace.

Jose walked up to the two men in the back of the bus.

“Hey, amigo,” he said to the guard. “They don’t speak English.”