Half-Man, Half-Van 1.1--a first installment of my NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

Today is November 1st, aka the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Today hundreds of thousands of people around the world take on the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Anyone can do it! YOU can do it! (Sign up here: https://nanowrimo.org.)

The goal is kind of like that of the #freewrite posts @mariannewest has been sharing: WRITE. If you want to complete the goal of a 50,000 word novel, you don't have time to go back and rethink and rewrite and revise--you just have to write! You need to write approximately 1,700 words per day to meet the goal. It's doable and the goal isn't perfection--you can always revise later! Just get those words on the page.

There are loads of NaNoWriMo meetups, so you can actually join others in person and write together and help encourage one another. If there's not one already in your local area, it's very easy to start one! @improv and I organized a write-in years ago when we lived in Seattle, and the couple we met that day became very good friends. So it's a great opportunity to meet cool people, too.

In an effort to get myself posting more on Steemit AND hold myself accountable to participating in NaNoWriMo, I'm going to share my daily NaNoWriMo installments. I've already decided that I'm not going to worry too much about the word count, but will consider myself a success for simply writing something every day. I'm due to have a baby any day now, so I feel like that's a more manageable goal for me. If I also happen to meet the 50k goal, more power to me.

Here we go!

Half-Man, Half-Van 1.1.
The humans don't know what horrors the world holds. It's as if they walk around with blinders on. I guess this is the only way for them to get through their days without going insane. I understand. I love them, and so I will continue to protect them from these horrors as best I can. My main feeding human nearly walked right into a trap the other day--the creature was half-man, half-van! The legs of a man, but the rest was all van. What might a half-man, half-van monster do to the poor, frail body of my feeder? It could run towards her, fooling her into thinking it's just a man and that she'll have time to jump aside, then tuck its legs up and be all van and run her down! And me stuck by her side with this cursed leash!

Not that I really mind the leash. I relish the opportunity to have the leash and collar put on, because it means I get to go outside and assess the new dangers the world has in store. Without my knowledge of these dangers and my warnings, my feeders would risk immediate peril. Thankfully I allowed them to bring me into their lives nearly seven years ago. I shudder to think what would have become of them in this wicked city of Los Angeles without my vigilant protection.

I didn't know my true calling in life before these feeders encountered me. I felt I had mission, but I searched for it day and night and could not find it. One day I was following my nose to find my mission, and the secondary feeder jogged past me. I caught his eye and I'm not surprised at that. At the time, I was a little on the frail side, so much of my energy was consumed in seeking out my life's mission, but my glory shone through my slightly dulled coat. He saw that my energy was pulsing in me, driving me, pushing me to new limits. He couldn't help but follow me, and at first I was annoyed. I felt he was distracting me from my search. But as we sallied forth, I could see that the hunger in his eyes matched the hunger in my own. We were both searching for a purpose in life. And it hit me that our purposes might be found in one another. I let him pick me up and carry me on to my new life, and my mission was found in him and the main feeder.

If only I could communicate with them in their own tongue, I would be free to protect them to an even greater extent. As it is, I have to make do with the limitations of their expectations of "pet" and "owner." They feel they are protecting me with the leash and collar! It's a small price to pay, though, for the satisfaction of watching them grow and thrive in life and knowing my paw in that.

My mission in life met me with these people, and now our unit is growing. It's a credit to my role as their protector that they felt safe enough to bring new life into this world. I both laud them and shake my head in chagrin at them. To bring new life into this world! Horrors multiply at an ever increasing rate. I must be more on my guard than ever. Yet their foolish bravery inspires me at the same time. Perhaps this new human and I will be able to communicate to a greater extent that I am able to with the feeders. I'll be able to start trying from the very beginning, before the human is too dulled to the possibilities of interspecies communication. And perhaps I can raise this one to be more aware of the monsters, and help me spread the word of the dangers! What a team we would make, a dog and his boy.