NaNoWriMo 2013 - Plane Anthem

Today National Novel Writing Month begins.For the past few months (or years) I've flirted with the idea of writing a novel, and made tiny bits of progress. I have collected a scattered and diverse bunch of snippets, thoughts, conversations, ideas, and observations, and somehow intend to craft them into a novel-length work of fiction.I'll try to update a few times this month with blog posts about how my experiment is going, and hope to find some feedback from other writers online who are participating in NaNoWriMo this November.My working title is "Plane Anthem," and here's a few paragraphs from the chapter that I pinched the title from:

.....

Jerome is sitting at his desk and he texts me.  I read the message as I sit on the bus - “can’t do 5 today come cheese”

He’s not desiring cheese but his phone probably autocorrected ‘call Chase’ into ‘come cheese’. I can’t meet at 5 either so I don’t care. He’s sitting at a desk because he’s 32 years old and he has a job, and a house, with drums, where we practice.I’m on my way to class and I have to work on a paper afterwards so I forward Jerome’s message to Chase. It’s Tuesday but Chase is off because Tuesday is like the weekend for bartenders. We’re supposed to do the gig at a bar called Open Whiskey on Thursday. If we don’t practice tomorrow, we’ll suck. We might suck anyway.Jerome texts me again -  “Chase not cheese”I used to eat yellow cheese. That kind of yellow cheese that could survive in outer space or nuclear war. Its composition so perfectly unnatural, bound in plastic, destined for toddlers - but then I spent a summer working in a deli, slicing pepper-jack and provolone, and my taste for cheese became particular. Individually wrapped is now out of the question.I look out the window of the bus and see an empty parking lot with yellow lines spaced out in a grid over cracking grey asphalt. The yellow parking lines draw up to a bright yellow curb, stretched out across the drab pavement. It’s the same yellow as the cheese and it’s everywhere. The sole unifying visual element of my suburban landscape is the yellow of parking lots, the yellow of toddler-nuclear-space-cheese.Our band doesn’t have a name yet so I write a text back to Jerome - “let’s name the band ‘later not cheese’”Jerome is kind of serious about everything since he’s older and needs to be that way, so I don’t think he’ll like the suggestion. He probably wants the band to be called something dramatic like ‘Turquoise,’ or ‘the Finish,’ or ‘Plane Anthem’.

.....