Two Thousand Words Per Day

I wrote two thousand words of novel yesterday, and a chase scene involving old people, penny loafers, and parcour. Penny loafers--I was desperate for a pair of those, back in the '80s. Only, my school had gone and banned them. I don't know why. I think it had to do with people stealing the pennies, or pennies getting all over the floor. No-one ever explained the rule. It just popped up one day, and everyone who had loafers was shit out of luck.

It wasn't just loafers, though. There was a whole list of forbidden clothing, including:

* Shoes of more than one colour
* Shoes with laces of any colour besides black or white
* Earrings that hung more than 1 inch below the lobe
* Shirts with jabots or ruffled collars
* Unpleated trousers
* Hair wraps, dreadlocks, and any ribbon or hairpin that might be deemed "disruptive"
* Noisy jewellery of any kind
* Any earrings beyond one per ear
* Noserings of any kind
* Unnatural hair colours of any kind
* Hairstyles that blocked other students' view of the lectern.

You might laugh, but they really enforced those rules. The disruptive hairpin one, for instance--they got me on that several times. I had to remove a red velvet bow, a green corduroy headband (it was the eighties, remember? The eighties!), a silver pin with dangling swans, a copper pin with dangling bells, and a yellow ribbon with white spots. I got busted for long earrings a couple of times, as well, and for shirts with stupid collars. Oh, and lipstick. Lipstick was only allowed if the shade was not provocative. (Provocative shades included red, pink, beige, purple, lavender, and light blue. Essentially, lipstick was banned.)

I could get penny loafers now, I suppose. But nobody wears them any more. I can see why, too. The idea is pretty silly. Shoes with coins on the lids--how were those ever in style?

Augh. I'm having a hard time waking up today. I'm a little more alert than I was when I started writing this (hey, I've given up on the loafers, at least!), but my eyelids are heavy. I need a cup of coffee. Coffee. If a coffee company put a commercial on the TV where a giant cup of joe sneaked up behind napping cubicle-dwellers and kicked them in their bums, I would buy their coffee. Especially if they had a good jingle, like Iprenmannen. It would be particularly brilliant if they put a loud whoop or klaxon horn in the jingle somewhere, timed to coincide with the bum-kicks. Yeah. That would be great. I'd like that a lot. Folger's? Maxwell House? Are you listening?

If I don't stop yawning, I'm going to swallow a fly.

If I don't stop yammering, I'm going to fall short of two thousand novelwords today. That's my goal: two thousand words a day, till I've finished the first draft.

I suppose I'm off, then.