It's National Novel Writing Month! A bunch of @freewritehouse's freewriters have bravely (or foolishly? Only time will tell...) accepted the challenge of writing an entire novel in one month. These are: @amelin; @botefarm; @felt.buzz; @grow23; @improv; @kaelci; @kaerpediem; @linnyplant; @mariannewest; @ntowl; @stinawog; @carolkean; @byn; @kipswolfe; @bennettitalia; @aislingcronin; @nonsowrites.

Aaaand... I'm one of them.

50,000 words total, which breaks down to 1,667/day.

Still freaking out a little bit here.

I got through the first two chapters. But now I'm worrying... what if the outline I have in mind for this story refuses to gel? What if it doesn't end up hanging together? What if I can't figure out what it's all supposed to mean by the time I get to the ending? What if? What if?

Again, sticking with it and seeing it through all the way to the end is the challenge for me. And there's a long way left to go.

So:

Chin up. One foot in front of the other. One chapter at a time.

Like I said, there are going to be twists and turns here. So if you find yourself wondering what in the blankety-blank did I do with the storyline that began in chapter one, don't panic. Everything will make sense eventually. Or maybe even sooner.

I hope...

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Read and comment on my #freewritemadness posts for a chance to WIN SteemBasicIncome shares! For more information, click on the first banner at the end of this post

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In case anybody's wondering, this is my 80th 5 minute freewrite. (Disclaimer: even under normal circumstances, these usually take me significantly longer than 5 minutes to write and edit. And given that November is novel writing month, "significantly longer" has taken on a whole new meaning 😉).

Word count for this installment is 1717.

Come join in the fun at @freewritehouse! Lots of contests and other fun stuff for both writers and fans 😃🎉

Many thanks to the incomparable @mariannewest for hosting these wonderful daily freewrites :) https://steemit.com/freewrite/https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/weekend-freewrite-11-3-2018-single-prompt-option

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https://unsplash.com/photos/ACt2UZwHsIk

The Perfectionists

Chapter 3

God

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It comforts Him. This habit He's developed of stringing thoughts together to encapsulate events, like beads strung along a necklace. As a writer strives to select only those words and phrases which seem to best match the unnameable - worrying syntax, rhythm, grammar, and spelling into a shape that comes eventually to resemble a story - in order to clothe, and thus make visible, the myriad fantastical notions which swim about our world like so many invisible fish (despite the fact that such metaphorical clothing can never reveal the fish itself, but only allude to its existence), so He finds himself strangely engaged by this endlessly frustrating endeavor, this casting about for the perfect construct in which to safely place and keep the ephemera: the treasures which cannot be held by human hands, only by heads and hearts.

But the way He sees things is also quite different from the perspective of any novelist. Or any human being for that matter. It isn't so much one single perspective, as a conflation of all of the individual perspectives that ever were, are, or will be. And then it is also like each single perspective, on its own: separate, but connected to the others, creating ever-changing and kaleidoscopic patterns on a macroscopic level, which are invariably reflected in the microscopic patterns within each individual perspective, in a never ending feedback loop.

His perspective is also different in that it is like something else entirely, something beyond the human, and perhaps all the more human for it. For who is more human than God? And if that is the case, why wouldn't God need comforting? Just as much as anybody else.

So yes, he does find it comforting. But also... it helps Him to think about it. All of it. Because there's something about it He has yet to understand. And if He has yet to understand it, how can anyone else be expected to?

The monk, the nun, Louis and Justine: they are, in fact, real people. Flesh and blood. He sees them, as they are, in this moment. He's with them, and also within them, and of them. He is them; and yet... not them. He experiences the sadness and frustration of their interlaced lives, each laid out all of a piece before him, and the goodness of their hearts. And He wishes that He could do something to help them, to help even Himself, knowing full well that there is nothing He can do but what He's already done. He watches each life end in quiet tragedy, and holds it briefly in the fullness of His embrace, before returning it for another birth, another life, another certain tragedy.

In My name, he thinks, looking not only at them, but at all of the lives which have affected them, and all of the lives which they have affected, which are all of them. Including His own.

Always, He wishes for her: his counterpart, his muse, his life.

Eve is His first love. And in truth, His only. And Adam is the way He creates himself to come to her. To be with her as he wants to be, in the purity of His desire for her, He must remain innocent, vulnerable, transparent, free of guile and deception. And to that end, He finds himself excising the knowledge of good and evil, the very thing inside of Him that he fears will hurt her, and giving it the shape of the fruit of a tree, so that it is no longer with Him, but remains accessible to Him, as it needs to be. As they both need it to be, He and His love, so that they may be able to separate what is evil from what is not, in the place and time of that separation.

One part of Him retains a kind of copy of this key, for safekeeping, returning with it to Heaven, to watch over them both, the first man and the first woman, as they are part of him, and He is part of them. He is their guardian angel. He is God.

And what is left is Adam.

He gives her, and himself, over to innocence, because he refuses to be the agent of her destruction, and because he fears that it will be impossible to love, with the weight of everything that is to come, and everything that has already been. He does it because he fears what he is going to do to her, and what he has done.

But the evil which he seeks to shield her from, until love has had a chance to plead its case... that evil is still loose in the garden. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there, doesn't mean it can't hurt you. That it can't come unrecognized to you. Or to Eve, in her state of innocence, in order to offer her something which she is incapable of seeing, without having tasted of it, for the apocalypse that it is.

So she tastes it, and it tastes like danger, and violence, and cold brutality, but also like strength, and desire, and redemption. Both intrigued and frightened by this, she offers it to Adam to taste, not wanting to be alone.

And he, God, seeing himself as Adam, and seeing Adam as he is, and being with him, and within him, and being him, and yet not him, gently takes the apple from her fingers, and bites into it, without a second thought, holding her eyes with his own, risking everything for her sake, without (having as yet not tasted of the fruit) having the slightest inkling of what he's risking. And then, with the juice still running down his chin, he hides his face in his hands, knowing once more what he has done to her, and what he will do.

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Alpha sighed and put down the pen. He shook out his hand, which was cramping slightly, as he'd been using it for several hours. His after breakfast writing seemed to have gradually extended itself, of its own accord. Almost right up to lunchtime, at this point. Today had been one of the best yet. The stream-of-consciousness free write he always opened with had revealed some interesting and surprising aspects of his own psyche. Then he'd had several nice poems, and he'd fiddled with that short autobiographical piece he'd started a couple of weeks ago, and was still not sure what to do with, but couldn't seem to leave alone. And then this last, this piece about God, voiced in the first person! Where had that come from? Maybe his Catholic school upbringing was bleeding through. He had the feeling that it was part of a larger work which would reveal itself to him over time.

He was rubbing his wrist and staring abstractedly at the laptop on his desk, which he used frequently for surfing the interwebs but never for creative writing (being a purist on that particular point), when his phone started making noises. It was Zoe's ringtone. He hopped over to the coffee table and picked it up. "Hey", he said, "I'm glad you called. What are you up to tonight?"

A musical laugh came in response. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Actually", he returned, without missing a beat, "I'd like to be what you're up to tonight".

She got quiet. "Hmmmmnn..." she hummed in a considering tone. There was a brief pause. Then: "Yeah, okay! I'd like you to be that too".

He grinned. Today just kept getting better.

A few moments later he was in the kitchen making a sandwich to eat while he talked to Brody. Brody was his agent. Sarcastic and vaguely antisocial, but in an entertaining kind of way. He liked to call Alpha by his real name, Alphonse, just to mess with him. Hopefully Brody would have some work coming up for him in the near future, to pay for all the time he spent writing, and... doing other stuff.

Which reminded him: he would have to make sure that the restraints were set up for this evening.

He took a bite of sandwich. Well done, me! he thought, This is delicious. That new gluten free bread is really quite tasty actually.

He'd been at his laptop, clicking around on random cyberspace nonsense, for ten minutes or so, and had worked his way through most of the sandwich, before he finally admitted to himself that he needed to stop stalling. He sighed and hit the call button to video chat with Brody. "Hey", he said with his mouth full.

"Hi", said Brody. "Nice table manners. So I've got good news, and also bad news. Good news first: I found you a gig."

Alpha breathed a sigh of relief. "That's fantastic! Just in time. What's the bad news?"

"It's working with Jillian."

Alpha stopped chewing and put the sandwich down.

"No."

Brody raised his eyebrows. "No? Really, that's your response? Alphonse, you can't afford to turn down work. I'm fully aware of this. You know I'm aware of this. And I know that you know that I'm aware of this. the circumstances suck, I grant you that, but I'm going to need you to be professional here."

Alpha finished chewing his bite of sandwich, slowly, then swallowed hard. "Ok", he said, with obvious distaste. "Ok, I'll do it."

After lunch he went out for a run to clear his head. He really didn't know how he was going to do this. Jillian was one of the most difficult people he'd ever been with. The last time he'd seen her she'd thrown a pot of hot pasta water at his face and told him to get the fuck out of her life. And he had, gladly. Grateful that his face was still intact. He would have loved to continue to stay the fuck out of her life, but Brody was right, he couldn't afford to be choosy like that right now. He needed the work, and he didn't want to start pissing off producers. It was just one shoot, it'd be fine. He'd just close his eyes whenever possible and pretend she was somebody else. Like Zoe.

Zoe.

Yeah, he really liked Zoe. Tonight was going to be amazing. He was going to do unspeakable things to her. And this Jillian gig was not going to get in his way.

He put on a burst of speed, as if he could outrun the future.

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©2018 Bennett Italia, all rights reserved.

Horizontal rulers courtesy @cryptosharon

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