Category: Louise and The Men of Transit

Books

NaNoWriMo and the TTC

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Seven days in, and I’ve written every day of NaNoWriMo. I haven’t been able to do this in years. Most amazing part: write, edit, fine tune, and post one chapter to Wattpad every day. Up to now, at best, I wrote one chapter daily during November. Never edited before. Too scared to even post it for public reading.

It’s rather exhilarating.

And exhausting.

My body feels run over. My voice is dropping in volume. My brain wants a time out — until I begin thinking about Louise, about having fun with this story, about how suddenly riding the TTC is fodder. The worse the slog, the better the fodder. Too bad this counterforce to TTC draining, straining, enraging will last only a month. Maybe if lots of people read it and share it, it’ll continue doing good for all those who have no choice but endure whenever they step onto the red-and-white inaccessible transit. Check it out 👇

Louise and The Men Of Transit

Books

TTC and Novelling with NaNoWriMo

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There are times when life provides the perfect story for the NaNoWriMo writer. My last few years riding the decreasingly accessible TTC and complaining to politely deaf ears exploded into an idea: why not write my tenth NaNoWriMo novel set in the world of TTC management, specifically a department called, “Customer Convenience Team Vision”? Suddenly, Louise, my protagonist popped into my head. After she said hello, so did Andy the CCTV department head and then Barney Barg, the TTC CEO who nicknames her Lou.

Feeling excited, I decided to throw caution to the wind and upload my chapters to Wattpad, a Toronto-based website where one can read all sorts of stories for free on any kind of device anywhere in the world. I’ve always admired how Charles Dickens serialized his novels in magazines, kind of like flying blind. But I hadn’t had the courage. Until now. This NaNoWriMo, I’m having fun. I’m tackling both humour — I want Louise and The Men of Transit to be funny — and publishing my chapters as I write them. Well, I am polishing them a little first. Still, it’s way sooner in the process than I usually do.

So without further ado, here’s chapter one — New Job — of Louise and The Men of Transit.