As I type this post on the morning of the last day of November, I have over 61k written for National Novel Writing Month. The official goal is 50k of a novel. In case you wonder, a typical novel is around 75-80k, but sixty thousand words is regarded by many as the absolute minimum length for a novel. By this evening, I might have over 70k once I add these new words to the one already written. Fingers crossed for me.

Page counts are meaningless. My students counted words on a page of text and did the math. Some books average 250 words/page, while others contain 400 or many more. A three hundred page book might have 75k words or 120k words. (One guess which way the Harry Potter books lean. Go look at a page and compare it to any Penguin classic.) Adult fantasy novels generally have larger word counts, up to 100 thousand. YA novels are shorter than adult novels. (There are exceptions. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, which I taught for many years, is very short.)

During NaNo, I have written over 70k in past Novembers, usually with some cheating by including other writing in my count (which I have done several times), or beginning with a 5k story (which I did once). I even began a new short story in this NaNo document while I was stymied by the novel I meant to write. I included blog posts and other writing in my NaNo document this year to augment my daily word count. That’s why I have over 50k. So long as I have fifty thousand new words related to my might-become novel, I do not consider my cheating is really cheating, and I did write 50k of brand new words for the novel Butterfly Fontanelle. 

I wrote in the morning, mostly, before I got out of bed and dressed for our walk. I made notes during the day in a little paper notebook. I would come back to the computer several times, especially if I had not written at least 1700 words in the morning. I typed in Times New Roman, single-spaced in a Pages document titled “Tula’s Tale” because I began with her story. That was richer and longer than I expected, and then it ended abruptly in a place I did not expect and without any overlap with what I’d already written.

This happened again. Several times. Every time I found what I knew was an ending, I experienced an instant of near panic and had to take deep breaths because I wanted to hold on to a character and because I needed more of her story on the page. I do need a novel, or I should say I want one. I would read back into the story and complete threads of scene or adventure I’d only sketched. I determined to write over two thousand words each day (which I managed for the first ten days and then twice more), or anyway at least 1667 words. That is the magic NaNo number, approximately fifty thousand divided by thirty days. They award a badge for that daily consistency, and winning badges, every single one of them, was a primary motivator for me. I found five “buddies” also doing NaNo, and one of them completed her 50k last night. One does not post her word count, and one has posted no words at all. 

[I do not like starting something without finishing. Back when I was a yearbook advisor, we missed two deadlines by a day each in twelve years and each time we sent our next pages to the plant early to make up for it. I was the only yearbook advisor I knew who told my students the truth about due dates. Completing assignments on deadline was an essential skill I wanted them to learn.]

I had 61,626 words as of the moment I copied and pasted this post to my blog site, but more now since I keep adding to this post online. I can be precise about the NaNo words that count: exactly 50,254 words are novel. I wrote over 50k new words for the novel. I will probably write more words later today, but this is good for now. I met my deadline.

Tomorrow, I will pull the newest version of Gena’s story (the three-year-old novella) and add the new words from my work on NaNo to compile a single document of over 70,000 words. (I hope that long. It looks more impressive, I feel, with all the zeroes.)

I will print out the entire document single-spaced, maybe with 1.25” margins to allow for notes. 

Doing this will feel like accomplishment.

Then the hard work of staying on paper to just read it first.

I wish I had been able to write more than 60k of new words, because inevitably, once I take green-ink pen in hand, the first round of revision will be about cutting. There are also small corrections I will need to make to Gena’s story, and even to those I wrote earlier in the month. But first, I will read over everything on paper. I need to make a chart for the characters, where they are and how they manage, their various theories about why this has happened, and how they survive, their goals, their losses. 

At lunch the other day with Molly, she would persist in asking me why this happened, the death at the beginning. Some of the biology I understood, but I’ve been doing research and that clarified for me what caused the change (death of the entire Animal kingdom) that my characters survive. I also have a clearer understanding of how. I have written some of that.

At the beginning of the month, I had a novella from the point of view of one woman, Gena. Tula visits in that story I began three years ago and she tells about Rosetha, who is a Peruvian living in what was once Mexico. After writing for this past month, I have… more characters. I have a full length novel. 

I need help going forward: I need a better title. Molly does not like “Butterfly Fontanelle” and she wasn’t impressed with “Instead.” I have toyed with Instead: A New Genesis. All the Daughters Sing?

Suggestions are welcome.

An ordinary young woman in Seattle wakes up from sickness to find she is alone in the world. All life other than plants and insects have died. The stink is terrible for a while. Plastics degrade quickly and every plant and animal fiber rots. Gena struggles to find water, food, shelter, and will never sleep again but begins birthing daughters who do not much resemble her. It is a new world. Not so much Brave as musical. Gena discovers there are other women like herself, and like her, they have bourn children in this new world, and without a sexual partner. All their children are Daughters, and all the Daughters sing.

—teaser

I ran an unofficial 5k on sand last week. I ran in Portland, twice over the past weekend. I have blocked knitting for my youngest grandchild and hope to sew up seams today and wrap it for Christmas. Gary wants a haircut. The sun has not yet risen, but I needed to get this post up, and that meant finding my camera and cord and setting aside my NaNo document for the morning. There is this rainbow sky I meant to share.