NaNo: First Two Chapters Down — 3,147 Words Down

O.K. I broke the rules. At least I read on the forums that you shouldn’t revise, etc., but just keep pushing on, but I actually think I not only improved some things, I added words to the revise of yesterday’s work.

I admit to recycling most of a post I originally wrote in real life but I tried altering it here and there to give it Nora’s voice. I think I might relook at Chapter Two again tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to listen to Nora a bit more.

I guess I’m not too worried right at the moment because I know I’m going to those Sunday write-ins. I’ll bulk up the word count then.

Anyway, here’s the revised and completed Chapter One for your perusal…

Losing Nora: The Fall and Misadventures of a Computer Diva
Chapter OneSome days Nora felt that life would be so much better if she could just take a drill to her forehead and release the demons screaming and pushing and shoving to get out. Some days she couldn’t remember what life was like before the pulsating throb that swelled and ebbed like a tide of pain from within. Her brain felt as if it where swollen like one of those mutant aliens in Spaced Invaders and her head felt so tender that even barrettes tended to focus the pain like fingers on one of those lightening balls sold in Spencer’s. Some times it felt as if her brains were draining out of her ears and some times she wished it would. Some days it was all she could do to drag herself out of bed and face a world that was clearly going on despite her daily trials and in spite of whatever tribulations she might have had.A good day was one spent out of the Emergency Department.An endless supply of doctors and specialists had brought no answers and certainly she had found little relief from the endless supply of medications they handed out to her like candy. Now pain medications were practically nothing but sugar-free candy to her without the enjoyment of the NutraSweet aftertaste.None of this was a secret. Her friends, her family, her co-workers and her evil boss and her Minion Supervisor had all been informed of the daily hell Nora went through – well, some had been informed and some had simply experienced the uselessness of watching her deal with it; whether or not they believed in the migraine demons was their business. Certainly the only person who really needed to believe was Nora as she was the one who had to live with it and she had tried just about everything though she firmly drew the line at acupuncture.

Finally, it just became part of the routine – the continuous migraine, the endless doctor appointments, the fact that she was on the Rite Aid pharmacist’s Christmas card list. It was just another thing to survive every day like the temptation to have a burger and cheese fries from the cafeteria or having to attend a meeting run by The Minion Supervisor or just dealing with the drama of working with the insane people or brushing her teeth.
And to be honest, Nora honestly thought that was all there was to life and all there was ever going to be.

And even more honestly, Nora was afraid that was true and also that it wasn’t. How many times had she told those around her that nothing good ever came from change? Change just brought more insanity. Insanity led to more change, which led to more insanity.

And so it began one painfully sunny morning in The Minion Supervisor’s office…

To Nora, Bob looked a bit like a shiny, slimy evil Muppet, if Muppets could truly be evil. His mouth seemed too wide for his large, balding head and beady eyes peered out at the world behind black-rimmed glasses. He always wore a greasy smile that made Nora feel as if he were merely pretending to be inept all the while plotting the destruction of the world or at least of anyone who dared to challenge him with something so trivial as the truth. Oh, yes, he seemed to bop around the office and The Company with the naïve exuberance of an eager first-time manager but all the while, simmering beneath the surface was a true brownnosing bootlicker who would tell anyone anything to make them happy and truly believe that if he was constantly running from meeting to pointless meeting lugging a stack of unsorted computer printouts, then he would be considered to be a productive member of The Company and promoted. Nora suspected that he knew the true secret of success at The Company.

And quite frankly, not only did Nora not care for him one bit but she also felt that he seriously underestimated her and everyone beneath him on the totem pole, but mostly she felt that he didn’t know what to do with an intelligent female employee. Not to mention that he didn’t seem to have a clue what the people on his team actually did even when he hovered over them like an annoying gnat questioning every little thing and yet never quite comprehending.

She’d caught him more than once asking other people in the office questions about the software that only she knew the answers to and worse, brownnosers that they were, they’d answer and wrongly at that! In fact, if it weren’t for her, the whole place would probably collapse. It was quite a lot of pressure for a young woman to shoulder particularly with her poor health.

But there she was in Bob’s office with the sun refracting off of those horrible glass bricks everyone was fond of building walls with and the migraine was throbbing to a rhythm matching the anxious beat of her pounding heart. Though she knew deep down that she was irreplaceable, that the systems analysts didn’t call her The Programmer Queen for nothing, that she was the Scotty of the department, she still hated being called into The Minion Supervisor’s office or, worse, The Evil Director’s. It was just too much like being called into the principal’s office back in elementary school – nothing good ever came of it. Certainly no one ever called you into their office to secretly tell you what a great job you were doing. As it was, annual review time was pure agony for her despite never having received a bad review. The anxiety was just too imbedded in her to not overreact. Paranoid thoughts spiraled out of control, spinning out of any sort of regular pattern. She simply would not be able to concentrate on anything from the moment the reviews began until her own review was over and she was sure that she’d received excellent marks as well as the usual recommendation that she get sent to training that They never actually got around to sending her on year after year. Once she even got kudos just for donating a cheap toaster to the office kitchen.
To be called in a month before the annual review was enough to send Nora into a full scale panic attack with blood draining from her face, acid rising in her stomach, and heart pounding blood into her aching head.

He shut the door, cutting off her escape route, and joined her at the little table in his barren office.

“Well, I was working on the annual review paperwork, you know, and as you know, HR has us use this software that generates reports to help fill out the tedious parts. When I ran the report for you, I got an alert,” Bob was saying though to Nora he sounded like he was on the other end of a tunnel. She stared at him without responding. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to that really. After a moment, he continued, “The alert is for absences – apparently you’ve had eight unscheduled PTOs. As you know, you’re only allowed to have three a year.”

Nora blinked. She was truly beginning to feel sick to her stomach. Of course, she knew she’d gone over the three unscheduled PTOs this year. This year had been the worst and some days she simply hadn’t been able to get out of bed and some days she hadn’t been able to face the insanity surrounding The Minion Supervisor and his pawns plus the migraine. She had assumed that since he knew of her medical condition and the fact that he never commented about the fourth or the fifth or the sixth absence that everything was all right. Perhaps that was naïve of the thirty year old, but then again, he was supposed to manage her, wasn’t he? He was supposed to warn her when she’d broken rules, wasn’t he? “Well, I’ve been sick” was really all she could say. What did he expect her to say? She couldn’t go back in time and not call in sick and instead sit at her desk longing to crawl under her desk and sleep with medicated help.

“Oh, I know! When I got the alert and saw the instructions that you needed to be terminated, I ran into Laura’s office and said, ‘Oh my God! They want me to fire Nora! What do I do?”

Nora blinked again. The throbbing was getting worse and somehow he seemed to be a little too jubilant about her impending termination for her comfort. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” she thought. “This can’t be happening!” All she could think about was how ruined and humiliated she’d be if she lost her job. How would she pay her bills? She was up to her kneecaps in debt. How would she face her parents, who had sent her to school and work when she was a teenage no matter how sick she was. She could remember only twice being too sick to go to school or work when she lived “at home” and one of those times she’d been sent home from school and told to stay until her fever was gone.

“But it turns out that I was supposed to give you a verbal warning at your fourth absence,” he explained setting a copy of the unscheduled absence policy in front of her to review. “And then, see, I was supposed to give you a written warning on your fifth. Then on your sixth, you should have gotten a letter of concern and on the seventh, you should have gotten a final warning so that at your eighth you would have to be terminated, but we haven’t given you any warning…I can’t be expected to keep track of your comings and goings, you know.”

Nora looked over the policy, toying with the edge of the paper. Mostly she was pretending to be studying it hard so she didn’t have to look at him. God how she hated him and she’d never actually hated anyone and he was ruining her life, punishing her because she was sick. She felt like throwing up right there on his desk on his unscheduled absence policy.

“So, what I’m going to do today is give you this written warning and have you sign it. I can’t not do that, but you know you’re a good team member and we wouldn’t want to lose you; so I did talk to Laura and she talked to HR and it turns out that chronic illnesses like migraines are now covered under the FMLA,” he informed her.

“The FMLA?” she queried.

“Family Medical Leave. I picked up the packet for you,” he told her with that weasely smile like he was doing her a big favor, not covering his ass from his own screw up. “You just need to fill it out, get your doctor to fill out the second part and get it back to HR as soon as possible and then everything should be all right.”

So there was hope, a loophole. Nora still felt the need to escape, to grab the packet and run for dear life. She wanted out of his bright little office with its closed door and candy leftover from the last Christmas season or the one before that even. She wanted to get the paperwork to her doctor and get it signed and get it to HR before anyone had a chance to think twice, before anyone changed their mind.

She glanced at the paperwork he’d put in front of her, including the written warning. A written warning put her on probation, which she didn’t like, but as he stared at her holding the pen in front of her, jerking it every few seconds as if to force her to take it, Nora didn’t know what else she could do. She didn’t think he’d let her out of that office without signing that dreadful paper that would put a horrible mark on her excellent record. No one would remember the years she campaigned for United Way or helped plan Christmas parties or donated a toaster, because when they looked in her file in Human Resources, they’d see this ugly mark. God, how she hated him.

Reluctantly, she took the pen from his chubby fingers and signed the written warning, feeling all the while that she was somehow sealing her fate, whatever it was, with that blue ink.

tags: NaNoWriMo, writing

3 comments

1. on November 2, 2005 at 10:22 pm

   Tamara said:

   Wow, I really like it. Excellent details. Last year (and even this time) I have gone back and added detail to an already written part. It’s not really revising, it’s adding, so I think it’s OK as long as it doesn’t get away from you!

   You’re doing great on word count. Now I need to catch up to YOU!

2. on November 3, 2005 at 9:35 am

   n. mallory said:

   The strangest thing about going back to look at my old blog is that I had fogotten that someone had gotten fired that morning. It’s almost like it was foreshadowing in my real life and of course I can only see it in hindsight. It’s as if The Minion Supervisor had gotten rid of one troublemaker and was focusing on the next, slowly getting rid of those with freewill.

   And I had a thought based on our discussion yesterday about the different treatments “Nora” tried. I’m going to add in the aromatherapy part at the beginning of Chapter Two today. I just think it’ll fit nicely and flesh the scene out a bit…well, make it an actual scene.

   How’s the journal format working out for you? I’m probably going to sprinkle blog entries through my story.

3. on November 3, 2005 at 11:27 am

   Tamara said:

   It would be going better if I hadn’t had a migraine since Tuesday night. Great timing, huh?! And it’s my busiest time at work, and I have to write a bunch of copy for our Annual Report.

   Otherwise, I have been trying to remember that even though it’s a journal, it can have scenes and dialogue. I actually flipped back through my copy of “Bridget Jones’ Diary” to remind myself it doesn’t all have to be strict “journaling” but more like a journal form of first person.

   Now I guess I need to figure out what the strong reason is to have it in a journal format at all. (Aside from that contest I want to enter, that is!)

   I think your NaNo is shaping up very nicely so far! Yay!

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