Well, it seems unlikely that I'll make the goal by the end of the month, but for the first time, I'm writing regularly on the story--every day on BART. Even better, I'm not tired of the story yet. That's probably because I don't know how it ends.
But I'm not going to worry about how many words I need to write a day; I'm just focusing on the fact that I'm actually writing.
The story, in case you want to know if you should start saving money to buy it, is about two brothers, neither of whom are particularly happy. One brother is stuck in the past; everything reminds him of something from back in the day. The other brother is stuck in the present; a present he thought would be different, and worse, a future looming that he doesn't want any part of.
They end up going on a road trip to various points around (and just outside) the state.
Here's a brief sample from one of the many flashbacks our narrator has:
When we were in junior high school, we went camping with our parents a few times every summer. They belonged to one of those membership campground things, so it was pretty easy to find somewhere to go, even in the summer when everyone wanted to go camping.
Harbor and I had grown up sharing a tent, and we constantly pestered our parents to kick in for an extra tent so we could sleep separately. This was because Harbor, in addition to being a sleep-farter, was such a heavy breather when he slept that we often woke up first thing in the morning to a miniature rainstorm inside the tent. The condensation built up all night, and in the morning, it just started falling. Not as steady as rain, but intermittent enough to keep you from falling back asleep.
Plus, I don’t know what he did, but his shoes smelled like rotten ass. His feet alone were no bed of roses, either, but his shoes were so foul that we couldn't leave them anywhere near our tents, lest our noses be assaulted by his foot funk.
On the upside, it kept animals away.
Not so with the mosquitoes. That was the other weird thing; despite sharing a tent, Harbor woke up practically poxy with mosquito bites. I would have maybe two or three. My parents joked that I must have been too bitter for the mosquitoes to like. Harbor thought this was hysterically funny despite the fact that he spent the better part of his day--when not forging new trails through the wilderness or finding the perfect rock to skip across the water--scratching like a flea-ridden dog.
So if you end up seeing my book someday, now you can say your read part of it before it was a best-seller and adapted for the big screen. (Ha.)
