1667 words per day.

I think this is a pretty safe estimate. We figured it out last year, but the last time we wrote it was March, which has an extra day. I'm not sure if we figured that day in.

Nonetheless, I am going for it. No more. No less.

I am going to write a scene per day, 1667 words per scene, 2 scenes per chapter. Give or take. I like the structure. I also like the idea of a beginning and an end each day. We'll see how it works.

Anybody else got a plan?

All the old how to write a book books.

I got out all of my how to write a book books, and I intend to refresh my memory one day soon. Hopefully before I'm supposed to write a book, which doesn't give me much time.

I haven't quite gotten the nerves yet. I wonder if perhaps they won't come at all this time. Maybe a little part of me has died from not writing in so long. Maybe a big part of me has been sucked out by the vacuous uninquisitiveness of teenagers. Maybe writing is no longer a part of me at all. (In fact, it's been so long since I've done anything purely indulgent that I'm not really sure if there is a part of me left to indulge. Maybe I am just entirely work-self and mother-self and sleep-self.) Maybe this will be good for me.

Or maybe I'll stare at the computer screen for a half-hour a day and then walk away feeling even worse about myself. Maybe I will finally come to the realization that there is no great American novel in me. There is no best-seller waiting to be sold. There is only this. I have nothing else.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with this. I've produced a perfect child, and I've purchased a lovely home, and I certainly do accomplish things.

But I always wanted to write a best-seller. There. I've said it. I've confessed it. Not for the money, though it wouldn't hurt. Not for the fame; I'd use a pen name. Just because I always, from Kindergarten on, wanted to be a novelist. Is that so wrong?

And, normally, that fact would leave me all tingly and excited and fearful at the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. But, now...nothing. Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?

I don't like the name Mark.

I mean, it's fine for a real person, but I don't like it for a fictional person. Any suggestions? New Orleans. ADA. Married (unhappily). Boyish charm. Any suggestions?

On the love of misery.

I also misjudged Mark, another primary character in my novel. Initially, I thought him more noble, more heroic, perhaps he had been in love with Augustine in their past, perhaps the decision to marry Dempsy had been coerced. Perhaps he was faithful to Dempsy.

I've rather changed my mind about him. Not that I don't sympathize. He's only human (fictional, but human). I'm sure he must have had some feelings for Augustine when they were involved. Pehaps their relationship was an unspoken, even ambiguous, one. There's no doubt in my mind that Augustine was never the kind of girl to explicitly express her emotions. There's a chance that Mark never knew the depth of her true feelings. It may be that he was miserable, wanting so badly to have something beautiful and romantic and perfect. Augustine might have seemed a lost cause.

When he turned to Dempsy, the more demure, more vulnerable, more romantic figure, he was received with open arms, with sincere affection, with voluble confessions of love. In short, he was secure in his love and in his ego. But after years of marital bliss, day after day, it must have begun to seem rather prosaic to him. Augustine, always near at hand, seemed somehow more enticing again, more mysterious, more of an adventure than poor, devoted Dempsy. Again, misery sets in. He pines for some imagined lost love. He begins to find his beautiful, romantic, perfect marriage a little disappointing.

The important thing to remember is that he can't help himself. He's not a bad person. He's just needlessly ambivalent. Maybe his hopes and expectations for life were plundered from a series of existential novels that he picked up in college. Sartrean horror stories that reveal that the true nature of the intellectual must be unhappiness and indecision. Or am I over-thinking him?

On love and error.

The novel that I intend to work on is an old idea of mine. In fact, I started working on it last November, but I was so bogged down with work, anxiety, child-rearing (not to compare my child to a bog), etc. that I just couldn't stick to it. (Hopefully, this year I'm a little more with it, despite the fact that I have even more bogs to contend with.) I actually began toying with the idea years ago, but I never could make much of it.

I'm beginning to think that the reason that I couldn't make heads or tails of it was because I wasn't mature enough to understand the characters. I wasn't (ok, this is going to sound puerile, but here goes) vulnerable enough to be able to understand their humanity.

For instance, I had always imagined Dempsy to be wickedness with a Doris Day veneer. However, my beliefs stemmed from a deep-rooted distaste for women who remind me of Doris Day. (Oddly, I'm quite fond of old Doris Day films. Go figure.) The idea of women who fix their hair, dim the lights, and start the music when their darlings arrive home from work somehow worked on me like a red flag on a bull. Now, though, I can sympathize with her somewhat. Wouldn't a little innocent love, fidelity, sweetness be a nice thing to have? Is trying to create a soft cushion for addled, old love really that bad?

Augustine, on the other hand, I had always sympathized with because she was a ball-buster and she wouldn't be reined in. However, I've begun to see that even Augustine was a little envious of Dempsy all along. She'd been hurt, and she'd developed a veneer of her own, suits and snide remarks and sarcasm. I liked Augustine because she was self-sufficient, a quality that I was unable to perceive in Dempsy; however, I wonder now if Augustine has ever really been happy being self-sufficient. Maybe she's only just not unhappy, which isn't a great place to be.

And, then again, between the two of them, I realize that I was imagining them as one-dimensional, maybe two-dimensional, characters, having a limited number of possible outcomes and values and emotions. But characters, like real people, are nearly infinite in their possiblities, their neuroses, their potential for error and redemption. Dempsy isn't lacking in self-reliance, but she is aware of a deep-seated need for companionship and community. Augustine, despite her protests, isn't entirely self-sufficient, nor should she want to be, though she does want it very badly.

The question that I most want to consider now is: After all of the errors and miscalculations, can a person have redemption just because she wants it?

On writing another bad novel.

I've definitely gotten myself back into National Novel Writing Month mindset, after reviewing some of my more painful entries from March 2005. In fact, even now, despite the lengthy days that will pass between now and the moment I begin writing again (November 1, 2006), I am skillfully neglecting my actual work! Smashing! That's when I know I'm ripe to write a bad novel. Will any of my past cohorts and comrades in cliche join me on this new expedition or even bother to revisit our lost days of bad-novel-writing? It's hard to say. I've mentioned the idea to Natalie, who is awash in interesting stories from California this year. Jack should certainly have a lot to say as one of his very own plotlines manifested itself just last year during Katrina. I've nearly forgotten the other folks were who were planning to write and didn't. But Jack and Natalie, my co-scribblers, will you respond? Are you up to the challenge? I guess you can only answer that question if you read it, which may or may not happen.

Nevertheless, response or no, I've begun to consider various bad plotlines, cloying character development, raunchy ripostes, etc. I'm taking notes, kids. I'm getting ready. I'm gonna be a contender.