Last night, I wrote 1,343 words between 12 midnight at 1:30 AM. My goal was 2,000 words, but I came to a stopping point and figured it was best to call it a night.
I don't have a title yet. But here's an excerpt from the first few paragraphs.
Paula was hiding in the tall grass smoking her father's Marlboro Lights when she heard the gunshot. The sound startled her. She instinctively put out the cigarette and exhaled, waving her hand in front of her face hoping to brush away the smell of smoke. Paula had been hiding her smoking habit for five years now. No one at school questioned why she always smelled like smoke. The assumption was she hung out with her dad. Her dad smoked, and there you go. Truth be told, she only saw her dad a few minutes each evening when he sat in front of the TV to get the dinner she prepared.Paula looked up along the grass line to see if anyone was there. She couldn't see anything over the sloping hill a quarter mile away. A cigarette wasted for no good reason. She sat down again, pulled out another cigarette and used about five matches before she lit this one.
On the other side of the hill, a light blue Cadillac was parked in the middle of the deserted cow pasture--the driver side door open, the trunk also open. Laying in the grass, in front of the car, the body of East Texas State University's psychology professor Allen Rose. A light breeze moved the grass and the thinning hair on his head, his beard. The gunshot took a good portion of the right side of his head off. Dead, but his legs and arms still twitched a bit. The blood pooled beneath him, staining a perfectly nice Polo shirt.
