crapped gain and beginning again. I’m thinking that this circular process will be at the center of this month’s work and that I will probably never surpass more than 10,000 words but, if I keep around all of the other first, second, and third chapters I write and abandon, I bet I will have well over 50,000 words come November 30th. I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere on the NaNoWriMo website that says that the 50,000 words must come from a single contiguous story (although I will vehemently argue that most novels are not at all a single contiguous story) so none of this matters but what if it did? Could I earmark that as a victory should it come around? A victory over what, really?

If I could write a novel of beginnings—that is to say, if Italo Calvino hadn’t already beaten me to it—I would have an entire novel written; possibly several. It would be a novel I would think was good and, since it would’ve been the first of its kind, it would’ve been considered visionary. I’m quite certain of this and I can rest assured in this certainty because, although Calvino beat me, he also made certain that I would never have to put my theoretical novel of beginnings to the test. As theory, it’s fantastic, and really, if you look about my study, you will find nothing other than all of the pieces of that novel, beginning after countless beginning, each trailing off into their unique lonelinesses, characters caught in mid-thought, mid-action, characters arrested in fiction, frozen, petrified, fossilized.

Tomorrow, I’ll start over all over again.