I did not have my camera with me so I cannot post a photo of the orange-juice orange Mustang we saw this morning at Costco. The sticker price is a tad over $44k, but I could save $4k buying it from Costco. I laugh about this because the color is one of my husband’s favorite (bright) car colors, and because somehow we managed to raise a son who likes muscle cars. Yes, it’s true. He bikes or busses or walks to work and doesn’t own a car, but if he had one it would be a Mustang GT. Or something like it.

April I have committed this year to CampNaNo again, a daily writing tracker. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November involves a commitment to 50k words in 30 days. I’ve done it three times. The “Camp” in April works differently and allows writers to determine how many pages or words or hours or minutes of time they want to commit to.

I dithered and pledged something easy. I pledged to write 10,000 words. I expect to exceed that, and so far have 2900 words. But here’s the thing: What do I really want to work on? So far I have taken fragments of story ideas and worked on those. Do I work on one of the novels? fantasy and SF? flash nonfiction? poetry for National Poetry Month?

Good questions.

So far, as I said, flash fiction:

“And Another Thing” realist fiction about a drunk in his bar confronting another drunk, and it’s funny. It’s been a long time since I wrote funny.

“Final Words from the Master” is a first contact fantasy about the end of a seriously unfortunate landing on what might be Earth by kinder and more intuitive people than ourselves.

“The Way They Disappeared” about a young girl who causes an attacking hand to, well, disappear.

“Rapunzel” is realist fiction about a girl scooping ice cream in a tourist-town, and it makes her ears cold—actually no idea where this will go. Also funny.

What I think I most want to work on is a novel that no one wants. My goal was to show the hard work of recovery from overwhelming grief, but that grief-inducing scene remains the highlight and I kept pushing it earlier and earlier into the novel in order to focus more on what happens afterward. Every time I tried to reveal that event late in the narrative, I got chewed, even when I left foreshadowing hints big as pink elephants. And with that scene near the beginning, the rest of the story apparently feels like a letdown. There must be a way to fix this, but I do not seem to be a good enough writer to figure out how. Still. I might try again.

Maybe create a short story to try out a different structure? What if the grieving mother imagines other ways her life might have gone? What if grief is her best option? That’s cheery.

Or I could work on another manuscript entirely. I have a novel that won publication and prizes for the first chapter. Maybe that one?

Or flash.

Stay tuned for daily updates and maybe a shared story along the way.