30 Days of Night: #NaBloPoMo on the Graveyard Shift
It’s been one year.
Three-hundred-sixty-five days, plus one leap day, and a couple thousand cups of coffee, since the last time I stared November in the face.
And the first time November stared right back.
One year ago tonight, I got lost in something so frightening that, until I lived to see the end of it, I had always been too shaken by the very idea to even let myself speak its name.
NaBloPoMo.
To be asked, no… forced, to go through an experience so life-altering that some I once called friends never recovered. Just 30 days on a calendar that, coincidentally, begin in the still quiet hours of All Hallows Eve. When deals are done with whatever tells grown men and women that everything will be okay, if they just keep their hands and feet tucked inside the covers at night.
The name that, if you’re a writer, you know.
NaBloPoMo. The writer’s boogeyman.
And every writer knows that, on All Hallows Eve, you can’t kill the boogeyman.
So here I am, one year later, and the boogeyman is back. Only this time, he only comes out at night. This year, very unlike last year, the world… my world… is lived from dusk till dawn. And I write for the boogeyman on the graveyard shift, in November, during 30 days of night.
And for those of you who write in the safety of the day, NaBloPoMo is just another word. Like sunshine, or coffee. But for those of us who live to write at night, well…
It’s waiting.
*for a Facebook LIVE reading of this post, CLICK HERE.
© Copyright 2016 William S. Friday
The night time is the right time… or is that the write time…?
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Or maybe just the fright time…?
(we haven’t even talked about the ghost)
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Yes! Tell me about the ghost! I’ll swap stories with you. The house I grew up in had a ghost.
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I’ll call that post, “The Ghost of Imperial Highway”.
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Sounds good to me.
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NaBloPoMo, may just be my new favorite word.
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I believe NaBloPoMo can be used as every part of speech.
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As the theory goes, everyone knows boogeymen disappear if you put the blankets over your head, and so by putting a blanket over a boogeyman’s head his belief in his own existence is impaired. Apparently, light blue blankets are most effective but no-one seems to know why.
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Linus Van Pelt carried a light blue blanket. I think that says it all, Veronica. And it is so nice to see you here!
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I’m wondering if you just made yourself scared typing all that..in the dead of the night..alone..in that warehouse (?)…alone…at night…with just the tap, tap,tap of fingers on the keyboard..heheheheh..
Ok, I’ll stop..it’s getting dark here and about to rain too.
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Ha! No, I wrote that in broad daylight… but it’s dark and scary quiet right now… all alone… in a creaky warehouse… with no one here bu
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omg….did the spirit get you??? and wow..I was wondering why it was dark and scary..then realised the time.
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Nope, just the curse of the Red Light Laptop.
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