The kids are alright

A winter or two ago, I decided to take a crack at a writing discipline of a thousand words a day. This is a rewritten excerpt from those days, appropriate, I thought, after the first day of NaNoWriMo. 

This is the goal, a goal of a thousand words. A day. So what do I really want to write about, what do I want to cover?

A thousand words. I need to hit a thousand words. 

What was that? It sounded like the dishwasher. Or an icicle piercing the skull of one of my kids. 

(I listen for screaming.)

Nothing. Not a sound. Probably the dishwasher. 

(I send the kids away from the house, and put on the headphones.)

What will I write about? It’s tough when I don’t have an assignment. Left to my own devices, I don’t really know what I want to say, or to whom. The words just kind of lay in my mind, flat and lifeless, like my tongue when it’s really really dry. Like it is now. Dry as a bone, dry as the Sahara, but wait, those are clichés and clichés=badness. So, if I riff on it, it’s dry like chalk, or dry like, like the tongue of a writer who has to ignore a possible fatality in order to hit a thousand words a day...

November 1 report: Daily NaNoWriMo word count goal met. No children, pets, or family members were harmed, or seriously yelled at, as a result of this effort.