Crumbs of a Plot: Day 5

Monday 5^th November

Monday brought frustration and a minor case of despair with it as Tasha realised that she had lost her notebook.  The ever important ring bound pad of paper that contained all of her notes for the month’s writing had not been in her backpack when she had checked last night after she had gotten home from her meal with Reika, nor had it been in the restaurant in question when she had ran back to check. If it had fallen out of her backpack on the walk to the food place, it was no longer on the ground anywhere and the only place she had left to look was Crumbs and she was sure she had picked everything up from there when she had left.

She needed that notebook. Without it she had no schedule for her writing, all of her character bios were in it AND all her setting notes were gone. She could attempt to write from memory but without that notebook it would not be as easy as it had been to get her word count up each day as she wracked her brain for the tiny details she had jotted down in the small hours of the morning, exhausted after work and well on her way to dreamland.

Racing for Crumbs in time to arrive as it opened up. Tasha was greeted at the counter, not by Morgan, but by her brother, Daniel, who had been clearing tables the day before.

“Lost something?” He asked, amused as he held up the blue covered notebook on which she had written her name and address in case such a thing happened.

“Thank you.” Tasha hugged the notebook to her chest, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“You’re lucky I spotted it.” Daniel chuckled, waving off her thanks. “I’d seen it on your table, so I figured it was yours.”

“Thanks.” Tasha grinned back anyway, still internally dancing over the fact that all her notes were not lost after all and she would not have to start from scratch with the characters she had yet to introduce to her plot.

Between that and the fact it was payday which meant she could afford to buy whatever she liked again, her day suddenly did a one eighty, going from doom and gloom to sunshine and buttercups as she bought Daniel a cupcake, bought one for herself along with her customary hot beverage, and bounced over to her table, setting up swiftly. Day five of National Novel Writing Month was when it started getting tough. If you were not miles ahead on your word count, the end was nowhere near being in sight and it seemed like a long and weary road to the end. When there were other stresses involved in that too, like worrying about work days and the possibility of an emergency coming up that could nuke your word count for a couple of days, it was highly likely that either you were not going to get much done or you would, if you had time shoot off miles ahead.

There was a danger in having too big a buffer too. You could get lazy and overconfident when you had a large buffer, believing that you had plenty of time to write and you were miles ahead so there was no big rush. This could often lead to a slow down or complete stop that could throw off your writing and lead to a dead end. Tasha knew, she had done it before.

Still she knew what she had done wrong previous years and could learn from her mistakes. She was determined to get the minimum done per day at least and two thousand words written a day if she could manage it. It would get her finished on time and she had set herself a goal. If she finished her fifty thousand words, not necessarily the story but at least the fifty thousand, she was allowed to dip into her savings and purchase the new TV she wanted instead of saving up over the next six months.

To do that, however, she had to get her mind off of the notes towards the back of her pad of paper, all of which were based on the end of her tale and focus on what was going on now. This was surprisingly difficult when all she wanted to write was the epic battle and conclusion, but she had heard people moan before that they had written the end of the tale and then gone back and how they had had to adjust the tale midway through had changed the ending anyway and everything they had written for the finale was worthless.

Staring at her computer screen was unhelpful, the words seemed to have hit a wall and did not appear to want to climb over. She had thought this would happen. It was bound to at some point but she had hoped that it would come a little later. She was there for a good hour, tapping out something that did not really read right but, until NaNo was over, would not get edited and scowling at the screen and complaining mentally about how much this entire section sucked.

“Hi.” Tasha was shocked out of her internal monologuing by the appearance of Reika, who slid into the seat opposite her for a second day. “How’s it going?”

“Slowly.” Tasha sighed, “The words have found a hole in my writer’s block and are squeezing through one at a time.” Reika laughed at that, shaking her head slightly as she did so.

“Got to be better than mine.” She replied, pulling her much smaller laptop out of her bag and becoming even more amused when Tasha adjusted the position of her hot drink to allow her to place it on the table safely. “I missed yesterday’s count by about five hundred words.”

“Ouch.” Tasha gave her new friend a sympathetic look, “At least you have the next couple of days to catch up, right?”

“I know, I know.” Reika sighed, “I was just doing really well and then I got distracted playing solitaire and that was it.” Tasha sniggered at her new friend’s petulant tone, “What? I won six games in a row last night.”

“Ah solitaire, the bane of so many NaNo writers.” Tasha bemoaned dramatically, causing Reika to glower at her. “Will you stop glaring if I buy you a coffee?”

“I could be bribed with caffine.” Reika agreed, settling down to write as Tasha got up and headed for the counter, purchasing two new cakes and a large coffee.

“I’m going to be the size of a house when this is all over.” Tasha informed the young woman sat opposite her as she pushed a cupcake across the table, “I mean Crumbs is an excellent hiding place, but it’s really bad for my waist line.”

“This is why I sit facing away from the counter.” Reika informed her, accepting the cake in question and taking a bite, “That way I don’t get tempted.”

“Should have thought of that.” Tasha groaned, causing her companion to grin at her expense.

Silence fell over the pair bar the tapping of fingers on keyboards and the occasional hiss as someone had to go back to correct a word that had come out looking nothing like it was supposed to and made absolutely no sense. With the weekend over, the cafe was back to its usual standards of being an almost unused feature of the bakery. The counter wasn’t any closer to being anything resembling quiet, the price of being one of the only speciality cake shops in the county but with most people popping in during their lunch breaks or between rounds of ‘somewhere to be in five minutes time’ they did not have time to stop for more than a few minutes at best.

This suited Tasha just fine. She was willing to share her privacy with Reika, mostly because the other girl did not interrupt when she was writing and had bought her a meal the night before, however the weekend had been rather loud and obnoxious for Tasha’s tastes. Borderlands was often like that for her when the weekend crowd piled in, but it was only three nights and week and work was different. She did not have a choice but to put up and shut up while she was earning her paycheck each night.

She came to Crumbs because she wanted to get away from loud, rude people like her neighbours, not because she wanted to put up with screaming babies and children that kept coming up to the table to see what you were doing. This was why she was rather glad that a new week had started and most of those who had invaded over the weekend had gone away, including some of the louder Wrimos.

She did not even notice that her writing speed had picked up considerably after Reika had arrived until she surpassed her word target for the day and just kept going, heading up into the nine thousands. Reika seemed to have relaxed too, her hands flying across the keyboard at a rather impressive speed, causing Tasha to wonder what she did as a job. At the speed she was typing at, Tasha could not help but wonder if she worked as a secretary or something. Then she remembered that if Reika had a full time job she would be there right now and not here, and resolutely took her mind off of that subject.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Reika asked, not looking up from her screen.

“Just wondered what you do for work. I mean I know you’re new here and all but...” Tasha trailed off.

“No, no it’s a valid question.” Reika replied as she stretched, looking surprised that Tasha had asked, “I’m a part-time cashier. Nothing interesting. You?”

“Barback.” Tasha shrugged, “Run glasses back to the bar and clean up spills. I’m training to be a bartender though.”

“Sounds fun.” Reika did not look like she was entirely convinced of that.

“Eh, pays the bills.” Tasha replied.

“To bad jobs.” Reika held up her Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“To bad jobs.” Tasha agreed, tapping her cup of hot chocolate against Reika’s drink.

They both took sips of their drinks and then that seemed to be the end of the conversation as they both settled back down to get another hundred or so words written before they got distracted again. Since the next distraction was them getting kicked out of the cafe since it was closing time, they managed much more than that and before they went their separate ways they agreed to meet up at the McDonalds nearby for a burger before they settled down to write and completely lost track of time.

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And that's all I still have