Gary spotted a robin’s eggshell on Nye Beach pavement the day before yesterday, exactly like this one.

Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 39,039 by 6:30 Friday morning, 26 April 2019

On our way home from two nights away (“We’re on vacation!”), we stopped several times. Gary bought a double-scoop ice cream cone. I bought batik fabric. One of my favorite fabric stores in Wheeler had a sign in the door. After 35 years, the store had closed. Last October! Such a lovely store and such lovely people we will miss. Next door in the antique mall, twenty feet from the front door was the table we had decided we needed just a few days ago. Round, 42” in diameter, and paintable. Probably a hundred years old and ill-used, but exactly what we were looking for and inexpensive. It has already been painted many times over the oak, so no guilt when I add three more coats of dark green. 

This morning I will need to find something to share with my writing friend. Most of what I have accomplished in the last week is the novel and I cannot very well print of a couple of hundred pages to share. A chapter? The shortest chapter? Something else? Seriously, everything I have worked on is long. 

This morning I reversed order of the first two stories in my novel-in-stories, LISL. I had moved an afterword into chronological order at the beginning. (Yeah, I know—it is always hard for me to keep things in chronological order. My literarily seems to happen in chronological order. I connect the hereandnow with an event when I was six and with something I hope to do next year. All of my writing is written out of order. All my stories longer than a few pages skip around in time. That alone, should have been a warning.)

LISL, set in Arizona in th early 60s, now needs a read, start to finish. It need close attention and revision, though I have spent hundreds of hours on its individual parts and the stories as a whole. I could see, even in my swift review, that I may have done some things right, and there is an overall tension and some humor. (Humor—not Homer—seems to be coming back to me after all these years.) And doing that is just one more way of avoiding the tedious task of summarizing the other novel, EMD. As to the latter, I have just read a review of two memoirs about the deaths of mothers:

“ ‘Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them,’ writes Michelle Filgate in her essay “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About.” But when a mother dies, leaving her child without the home of her love, that task of returning is supplanted by the task of grieving. Grief, then, becomes the new home.”

The review suggests another scene for the Arizona stories. And I have written a brief preface: 

He would say later that he did not know how he survived his last summer in Arizona. They were not free-range children but completely feral. They wandered out of the yard, off their block, and into the desert where none of them were killed by snakes or falls or as a result of getting lost. They were innocent and careless and their foolish adventures were wild with fun and full of fear. And through it all there was the chaos of his family, the loss of his mother, of what it all meant.

It is a short novel, but technically it is also a cycle of stories and not at all short for a collection of short stories, which is how it is disguised. 

I am sitting up in bed, the doves coo-cooing to one another. It is flirtation and I am in love with my home, with the skim of spruce-tops I can see from over the curtains in my bedroom, Gary bringing me coffee, the promise of labor. 

The view looking north from the bed of the Jane Austen Room of the Sylvia Beach Hotel.

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.

Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 36,030 by 6:30am on Tuesday, 23 April 2019

EMD word count: 67,679. It had to be done. 

Gary wanted tart for breakfast yesterday, but no, we will finish it this morning. We will soon be on our way for a drive south. I am bringing my computer and the charger so that I will not be limited in writing. It would be good to get through a couple of chapters. I committed major acts of butchery, working throughout the day yesterday to cut and cut and cut. 

Our new tenant has moved in. A couple of helpers parked a massive moving van in the road for a few hours, we withdrew to avoid the confusion and chaos, but eventually all his furniture fit. He was so very tired and we hope he finds some rest and relief from the strain of caring for a very ill family member. I got the trim recoated with white paint mere hours before he arrived. There will always be work to do, I fear. It seems like everything needs works, but the plumber replaced the trap in the sink, everything has been scrubbed twice. We plan a new roof on that building . . . hopefully in the next month. 

We skipped our walk yesterday morning because I wanted to drive north first thing for the trim paint (I went through the stored paint cans and there was nothing close) and then to paint in time that nothing would be the least bit tacky when our new tenant arrived. I was done before 10, the blinds went back up by noon when I was already back to work on the novel. We took our walk late in the day on a mostly empty beach, and admired the new siding on the west face of our home.

Ten submissions in the last couple of days. This morning, John Randolph Bennett on the Brevity blog, urges an approach to defining terms derived from Aristotle by briefly defining its “origin, its form, its source, and its purpose.”

Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 34,367 as of 7am on Saturday, 20 April 2019

EMD word count: 75,543 [untouched]

My meeting went well yesterday. I will miss our meetings after this month.

The scaffolding is down from the front of the house, and Gary has done most of the clean-up. There are still nails everywhere, and I think we both look forward to working on the front garden.

I could not sleep so I wrote and rewrote. I did not work on the novel, even turning thoughts away from it. BF needs butchery and I am inclined to butcher the old in favor of the newer words—not always wise.

I am restless and looking forward to the long walk we promised ourselves. 

In the mean time, enough work already. I am supposed to be retired. Today must be the last I work on the apartment. I am not convinced I have done enough, or will have done enough, but I need to stop. I was awake half the night again, never a good thing. I tried reading a much-praised novel with historical errors all over the place and I think I must let it go. I tried reading a famous work of nonfiction, and found I cannot get past the white privilege—how can the author express sympathy for the bearers, their heavy burdens and pitiful pay, without acknowledging that it is he who pays them a dollar a day to carry that weight of 80 pounds or more on their backs? Rich white men going places because they can afford to go, often at the cost of others in more than money. 

Altogether testy and distressed. It is never enough. 

Tomorrow I want a day to work on the novel without worrying about painting or hanging blinds or scrubbing anything. 

Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 25,876 as of 8:30am on Friday, 19 April 2019

EMD word count at 75,543

We have already gone for our walk. We were on the beach for over an hour on a still cool morning. A pleasant day. The fog concealed Castle Rock offshore while we scoured the high stony edge for trash—plenty of that. Then we walked down to the water’s edge, a hundred yards west and the Rock was still concealed, the shoreline misty with increasing fog. I love a foggy, cool day. 

Every day on our walk, I compose an essay in my head about what I find. The plastic, agates, shells that I collect and those I leave behind, the dogs we meet and the visitors we see also walking, local friends, including one who is almost always out an instant before us. Tomorrow we hope to walk far north to the headland.

Today I will meet with a writer friend, Ann. I was not sure what I wanted to take to share with her. There was nothing much new going on—I have not even completed Part 2 of EMD. I could have chosen to revise a story draft I have or to begin the new Louise DeFleur story. Then this morning I brought out the BF novella and decided I would print out the beginning to share. This is the story that began with imagining all the birds dying.

One of my friends does not read. Not news or magazines or books of any kind. Not a bit. And she doesn’t like films either. And she gets on these campaigns that look from the outside a little overblown and probably are. And then again, she is very kind face-to-face with people. 

Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 24,698 as of 6:30am on Tuesday, 16 April 2019

EMD word count at 75,321—revised again through page 129.

I have already discovered a place where I’d pasted in a scene a second time—I was so sure I’d done that. I wrote new lines. I revealed no more than I must about the tragedy. It should, theoretically go in the center chapter 8, but something else happens then. A life transition works. 

The news reported the fire at the cathedral of Notre-Dame. I approached the story three times, each time shying away. I feel an investment in her engineered and necessary flying buttresses and elegant, irrational details. It’s okay with the reporter that the gorgeous spire has burned since it is “not original” but added later, but most everything was added later as they found benefactors to pay for her rose window and side windows, the detailing of wood and glass that the builders planned for but could only complete after the money came in. [Thank you, Darlene Sherrick.] 

The cable was out and the good news was that it was not our cable but everyone’s. 

Our education system works overtime to reinforce gender separation. According to The Atlantic:

“Friendship is a critical influence on what boys are learning about cultural norms and permission to be yourself. Because of the way children are separated by gender beginning in elementary school, boys’ first friendships are often with other boys. They learn to practice skills of sharing and intimacy and connection with other boys well before they do it with girls. And we know from research that boys’ friendships can be rich and deep and life-sustaining. Boys will say, ‘Without my friends I think I’d die.’ ” 

When my younger son started school, his best friend was a girl just up the road. That relationship was forced underground before they were seven. By high school they hadn’t spoken in years. By the time the girl was in high school, that girl had been deeply involved with two popular and famously brutal boys. Her parents didn’t want to hear my concerns and neither did she. She never forgave me for trying. 

And from Elizabeth Kolbert’s recent article about America’s troubling history with ridiculous conspiracy theories: 

“Donald Trump got his start in national politics as a ‘birther,’ promoting the idea that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Several news organizations have tried to keep track of the conspiracy theories Trump has floated since then. One list, posted by the Web site Business Insider, has nineteen entries. These include the claims that vaccines can cause autism and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered.

“ ‘They’re saying they found the pillow on his face,’ Trump said of Scalia, during the 2016 campaign, ‘which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow.’ (The Business Insider list is limited to full-blown conspiracy theories, and excludes the President’s more casual lies and fabrications.) ‘No president—indeed, no national official—has resorted to accusations of conspiracy so instinctively, so frequently, and with such brio as Donald Trump,’ Muirhead and Rosenblum write.” 

It’s still my country. Right or wrong? Right. I would wish it were right more often.