Welcome One and All

Hello, my name is Jeff Fecke. You may know me from my main blog, Blog of the Moderate Left, where I expound on stuff now and again.

I've put together this blog specifically to talk about my experiences during the 2005 National Novel Writing Month, which challenges people to try to produce a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30, 2005.

Why do I want to blog this? Many reasons:

1. It's a timewaster. As any good writer knows, you need timewasters. If you don't waste time, there's no challenge.
2. It's a potential feedback generator. Note: I'm not suggesting it will actually generate feedback, only that it potentially could.
3. It lets me restate what I'm writing in another way. This one is the most important, and the real reason I'm doing this. Stories have a way of taking on internal logic and running away, especially fantasy stories. That's not good. By occasionally writing out what I'm thinking, and why, I give myself the opportunity to see things from a perspective outside the story. That's important.

At any rate, if you're still reading, good for you. Here's the opening scene, which you may mock at will:

She ran down the hill with reckless abandon, feeling the summer sun beat down on her auburn hair, the solid ground beneath her feet. She knew this land; it was her home. She had run down this hill dozens of times. Gracefully, she spun at the end, and looked back up the knoll to her house.

She furrowed her brow. That wasn't right.

The home was altogether different from any she'd ever seen before, a strange shape, a strange color. It was like no house she'd ever seen. And yet she knew it was hers.

She began to walk up the hill again, slowly this time. She reached to her side for her sword, and found it was not there—only an odd, rough fabric altogether different than the leather and mail she was accustomed to.

She quickened her step. This wasn't right.

And yet, somehow she knew it was.

As she approached, she saw a woman tending to a garden. The woman's clothes were as oddly off as the rest of this place, and yet, when the woman looked up, there was recognition in her eyes.

"There you are!" the woman said, smiling. "Go on inside, dear. Brian and your dad are getting dinner ready."

Lorelei looked at the door. This felt so much like home to her. But she knew it couldn't be.

She didn't have a family. She never had.