This past month I had lots of support as I participated in NaNoWriMo. My fellow members of A.I. (Authors Incognito, an LDS writers group) cheered each other on and came up with a different contest each week to help motivated us as we undertook the challenge to write 50,000 words in a single month. Well, I won the third week challange, which was to creatively use or mention toenail or fingernail clippers in our manuscript. Each writer was to submit a few sentences implimenting this and the rest of the group would vote on our annonymous entries for the best one. At first I baulked at the challenge, thinking a Nazi Germany war story written for kids would not really have a realistic need to include the use of fingernail clippers in the story. But one night as I came home the cresent moon hanging low in the evening sky gave me the inspiration for my entry. And by the way, I felt that implimenting the result of this challenge in my manuscript made this passage much better than it would have been if left to my own devices.
Below is my entry. In preface, Max is in the process of escaping from camp, where he is a prisoner of the Americans. He didn't actually use the fingernail clippers, but the group said just to mention anything to do with the clipping of nails would be sufficient.
The mid-summer night darkness took forever to fall. Luck appeared to be on Max’s side; the moon rested in the western sky like a thumbnail of gold waiting to be trimmed. Only the blaring beacon of the search light lit up the camp.
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