Deric closed his eyes and tried focusing on the instrumental trance music flowing through his headphones into his mind. It was from his favorite playlist and had an upbeat cadence that made him feel invigorated. The particular song he was listening to was a remix from one of his favorite songs in the mid-80’s.

He felt old.

Knowing he needed to get his thoughts down and into his google doc he cracked his eyes open again. He could have typed blindfolded but didn’t want to deplete the world’s reserves of squiggly red lines. It had nothing to do with humility, he just wasn’t that selfish of a person.

The page had the beginnings of a paragraph. His pinky wandered towards the backspace key and some part of his brain caught himself as it recalled that every semblance of a word counted towards his NaNoWriMo totals.

He cursed himself for even attempting this hedonistic project. He wasn’t an author. Who was he kidding? Apparently himself, though not successfully.

He sighed.

He looked up and around the table at those also sitting around the table. To his right sat Gennifer, a middle-aged woman who smelled of cats.

Continuing around on her right was Samual, a retired truck driver who used to run hauls for WallSmart. He preferred that people address him by Sam.

Then came Alexa. She had been coming to the writing group for about six months now and Deric could swear that everything in the woman’s wardrobe was some shade of pink.

Next was Alice, a retired truckstop diner waitress. She was always pleasurable but also knew how to shut someone down should they get rowdy.

To Alice’s right was Rebecca, a young woman that had shown up for the first time today. When she had introduced herself at the beginning of the meeting she had said she was writing about spiritual stuff. As young and vibrant as she was, Deric had stopped listening at that point.

Frank sad on her right and he was an older man that had served in Vietnam. If you hadn’t of been made aware of that fact during his own introduction, you couldn’t but help pick up on it by the best and hat he wore. Frank’s personality reminded him of that joke about vegan’s. How do you know when somebody is a vegan? Oh, they will tell announce it to you and everyone else in their vicinity.

Knock knock

Whose the-

VEGAN!

Deric smirked to himself.

The last person, sitting to his left was Maria, a woman who seemed to have it all together. Deric’s sitting position along her side hadn’t been by accident.

Deric mentally cursed himself. He had gotten lost in yet another daydream. He grumbled and looked down at his laptop screen again. There was nothing new.

He hated NaNoWriMo.

His squirrelish mind jumped again. Why name your company WallSmart? I mean how can a wall be smart? He closed his eyes again hoping to lose himself once more in the 138bpm flowing through his ears.

Visions of fictional beings started forming in his mind. One was a starfighter jock and they were weaving in and out of enemy fire. Yeah, he could work with this. He tried letting go of all the other partial apparations and focused on that one. It was not to be. It dissolved along with all the rest.

He looked towards the clock in the lower corner of his laptop screen. He had spent the last 45 minutes and had almost nothing to show for it.

He hated NaNoWriMo

His phone, sitting on the table beside him, vibrated. Thankful for the distraction he picked it up and saw his wife had emailed him. He skimmed the message and having seen that it wasn’t important, got lost in one of the adds in the email message.

The Veddyom movie had been released a few days ago. He wanted to see that. He really wanted to see that. His mind played with the idea of finding time to catch it but then focused once more on his blank screen.

He hated NaNoWriMo.

He had heard about the movie almost a year ago and had been anticipating its release. Why shouldn’t he go and catch it? He was allowed to treat himself to something entertaining, albeit temporary.

Stormy Dannfield had been in town just the week before and he had the chance to go see her perform onstage. His wife wouldn’t have cared about his going. He found himself wondering why. Was it because she trusted him? Or was it because she knew he wasn’t the type to try anything?

His blank page stared back up at him and he closed his eyes once more in embarrassment.

He needed to focus on getting something down on the screen. Something, anything, just words. The back of his mind reminded him that he had promised to stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up some essentials. Did shopping list items count towards his word totals? It technically did count as him writing something. Could he come up with 1667 things to shop for in the next ten minutes?

Who was he kidding?

He hated NaNoWriMo.

He tried to focus once more on that starfighter pilot. He tried envisioning them streaking once more through enemy fire but found his imagination faltering at the type of weapons being shot at him. SHould they be kinetic or energy based? Kinetic seemed to make more sense as all scientifically accurate energy based weapons would be traveling at the speed of light and thus wouldn’t be avoidable.

Visions of other Star Battle franchises flowed through his mind. They weren’t being accurate with their descriptions and they made billions at the box office and in merchandise. He then paused to ask the question all writers as of themselves, am I writing for art or for money.

His page was still blank.

F-you NaNoWriMo.