Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 38,287 by Thursday monring, 25 April 2019

EMD word count: 70,242, 240 pages, an imperfect but respectable length. 

TUESDAY. We were away in the morning and the point of being away is to be without the normal day-to-day distractions. Usually this means I do not bring my computer. No news. No television. I am offline for a day or most of a couple of days. Offline, what a concept! But I brought my computer and worked throughout the drive south. 

Before we left, however, I reread the flash nonfiction “Constellations” by Abby Mims on Brevity—nothing short of spectacular! A daughter recalling her mother and child, the hard loss of one, the welcoming of the other. It is the kind of story I am trying to tell in my novel. I wanted to reread it so I copied it into a file to avoid the temptation of internet.

The first blue heron was walking in Tillamook Bay, the second flew north to our south, thirty miles further along in our journey. Lunch at Ové’s Northwest was marvelous. We both had the three-cheese toasted cheese sandwich and then we checked into the Melville Room at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, lay down in the king-sized bed and promptly fell asleep for an hour. As I type these words, I am sitting in one of the chairs in that room and admiring the beach far below. Most of the rooms here have an unobstructed view of the ocean. 

Gary is sleeping in the chair beside me, the tide is half in at Nye Beach. We are in what is called “the library” here at the Sylvia Beach. We are eating very well indeed, and I think the release of tension trying to deal with the duplex and spending a great deal of money on the duplex and the house pretty much wore us out. 

I have begun reading What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler and realize it is not a new book, not even new to me since I recognize at least four of these stories. They are very fine. 

WEDNESDAY. Yesterday, after we checked in, we were both so sleepy that we worried we might be ill or poisoned or drugged. I had two glasses of Prosseco, one with lunch and one with dinner, separated by several hours and that does not seem enough to explain our lethargy. I think we were merely exhausted and stressed and relieve to be away. I feel fine this morning. 

At breakfast this morning, the sun is shining and Dorothy Dunnett was recommended to me. I think I may have read one of her historical novels, and that I did not like it because I objected to the historical accuracy of the psychology? [My arrogance. My hubris.] I suppose I should, at the very least, try her again even if I have read her before. I am unnecessarily and painfully petty about some things.  

A crow brought his food to the deck railing just in front of me, ate and cawed, and when she was finished she walked north on the railing to the other corner and wiped her beak clean before flying off. 

THURSDAY. A street sweeper works it way slowly around the loop while Gary makes a pot of super-strong coffee and brings me a cup. We have brought our own grounds so that Gary can have coffee strong enough, and the crew had only set up the coffee-maker with a filter, no coffee or water when he got there. As we sipped our first cup he said, “If someone pours from the pot I made, they will get a surprise.” Gary’s coffee is as near espresso as it’s possible to be. 

Once he’d poured out our second and a half cups each, he put everything back the way it should be. He says this was a good idea of mine to bring our own ground coffee. 

Out for an hour onshore this morning we found limpets and ugly-clams, a few interesting rocks, almost no trash, and four pieces of seaglass. The wind had died almost completely and only began to come back up as we returned in time for breakfast after 8:30. 

We are feeling well rested, I finished reading Fowler’s marvelous collection of short stories this morning and reasoned more about the novella though I did not work on it. My novel is in better shape than it was (with the arc of action and emotional intensity shifted well toward the end) and Ada Limón has given me the sweeter epigraph I needed. I had thought the final chapter was secure, but I have revised slightly and I think it will be stronger still before I am done. For Camp NaNo, I think I will reach 40k words, or even 50k by the end of the month, depending on whether I continue work on the novel or shift over the novella, whether I write entirely new words to post here, or make only smaller edits not worth transferring. I have five days to the end of the month. We will head home a little later this morning.