Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 4840 as of 6am this morning, mostly journaling. One completed flash fiction (920 words) for this first week.

revised novel word count: 9817 Chapter 1 “Lying to My Mother” (4448 words) + Chapter 2 “Surrender” (about 5297 words) needs reworking. I know I am making a mess for later on, but there, at least I am writing. This afternoon I will rough-in Chapter 3 “Finding the Will” and hope to accomplish another 5k words. Not new but reworked/reframed.

As of yesterday afternoon, my plan is to write, just write anything, for NaNo and count those words each morning. For the rest of the day I will work on the novel. Fifteen chapters? The NaNo word count, therefore, is what I have accumulated as of this morning. My word count for the novel is what I did as of yesterday.

My first flash fiction looks “done” and I am journaling to gain words for CampNaNo. Separately, I am revising the novel EMD, chapter by chapter—messier than it sounds since the chapters are reordered and recombined—reintegrating old material, writing new, editing as I go along. If I “complete” a chapter every other day I might be done with this new structure by the end of the month, and if I complete an essay or flash fiction each week, I will meet my CampNaNo goal. That much looks good.

This morning I am much less confident about what I am doing with the novel. The three parts I had in mind yesterday—Denial, Regret, Afterward—feel wrong today. Today I think: Regret, Grief, Hope. But how to cram the entire recovery/denouement into a quick swipe at the end? How to sustain tension, shift the dramatic high nearer the end? I would like to push the end of “The Promised Hour” close to the end and then the last chapter kept as is? Do I want less focus on Thena’s relationship with Larry, or do I want to reframe that or do I want some fantastical what-if that is all in her head? (Well, you know I want to do that.) Can I actually delay telling the story of the murder? I told it last in the original short-story version and I was totally smacked down for that. I never learned how to build tension. I can build and sustain tension, of course, I have done it, but that doesn’t mean I know how to do it here. I suspect that is something I must learn over and over again. (Karen Joy Fowler said that she struggled with her current project and her husband was there to remind her that she’d struggled each time.) 

I fear I will spend a good deal of time whining during my meeting with Ann on Friday. But at least I have the flash story to share. I plan to bring one to each of our meetings. That will allow me to meet at least my original goal for the month.

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Yesterday, Jeremy and his helper had the entire rotting deck cut apart and gone before noon. We may not rebuild most of the deck. No Scrabble this week because of work on house.

I made Pad Thai for lunch yesterday and finished the federal taxes in the evening. I made a first run at the state taxes (even more pages and also a new set-up). I know most people either use the online tax computing system or an accountant. I thought about that a lot while I was fighting with forms. But I am the person who prefers to understand how to create an APA reference rather than using an online source. I want to understand how it works.

Today, we woke early and hope to get a beach walk (we missed four days—our longest stretch in two years), clear out the linen closet, and finish the taxes. And there is more cleaning and painting in the apartment before our new tenant moves in . . . I have promised Gary we will never have to paint again as long as we live, but that also means I will have to paint the walls in the hallway pretty quick!

Will there be time for reading?