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About the author
Cass
Novel: A Great Distance
Genre: Literary Fiction
52,635 words so far   Winner!

About Cass

Location: Saint John New Brunswick, Canada

Home Region:
Canada :: New Brunswick

Age:25

Website: http://wordwhacker.livejournal.com

Favorite writers: Oscar Wilde, Harper Lee, Robertson Davies, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams

Favorite music: For contemporary stories: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Steely Dan, Elton John. For anything else, classical/instrumental music.

Non-noveling interests: Playing the guitar, being hilarious, procrastinating, using words I only understand contextually.

Joined date: October 1, 2003

Years done NaNoWriMo:
'02 | '03 | '04 | '05 | '06

Years won NaNoWriMo:
'02 | '04 | '05 | '06

NaNoWriMo posts: 24

NaNoWriMo buddies: 9

 


A Great Distance
an excerpt

Upstairs I put on a little music, soft, just some chatter in the background. Every sound I imagined might be you. The stretch of hours started to feel thin and tired; every second moved you farther and farther away from me.

I tried to remember the last time I'd seen you. Had I spent some of last night awake? I thought I had; I thought I had woken up for a while and watched you, hoping it might lull me to sleep with you. Your hair needed a trim. I couldn't see your face. The line of your shoulder, the freckles on your neck, were familiar. But I am romanticizing. I did not think this last night; I had not thought about your freckles and the line of your shoulder for a while. Or perhaps I had; or perhaps I needed to feel that I had. It was all part of something that was feeling more definitely, stiflingly, as something past; something not so real as brought to life through memories, second-hand impressions of a life.

I walked through the house; I left the lights on. I was haunted that night. Writing seemed impossible, but something pulled me toward it. I found my best fountain pen, solid red and gold, a pleasant weight. A small scrap book went with me as I moved restlessly through the house, now to the kitchen, now the living room, now my study. I read a little, scraps. I wrote in fragments, sometimes a word, sometimes a line or two. I rearranged some of my papers. I thought about the book I was writing, let ideas flit past; I didn't write them down. I let them go.

Every second took you farther away.

It was late, nearly three in the morning. I had to sleep. It was heavy upon me, the way I felt as a young boy, sick with a fever. It would make things better. I would sleep and things would be better.

Every second took you farther away.

Cass's Writing Buddies

Glowing Halo
Chris Baty
Winner!
50,105 / 50,000
Entropy Winner!
50,231 / 50,000
Eternal Winter Winner!
50,875 / 50,000
KJ-McLean
5,020 / 50,000
lauragoodin Winner!
50,257 / 50,000
Maize
0 / 50,000
Snow in August
0 / 50,000
Glowing Halo
Susan Douglas

30,000 / 50,000
lanners
0 / 50,000




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