NaNoWriMo ~ coming in November

Today I told my friend Emily about NaNoWriMo, a marathon dash to complete a novel in a month. Since the chosen month is November, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. That would be a 50,000-word novel, written from beginning to end in a mere month. And November is a 30-day month! Let's see, doing the math ... 50,000 words divided by 30 days ... hmmm, that would be 1,667 words a day. As a teacher who has graded many papers, I know that a double-spaced page of regular-sized type is about 250 words, more or less. So I'd have to complete a 7-page paper every day? Aaaaiiiieeeee! My students complain about having to write a 3-page paper by next week! Tonight I was reading articles from the New York Times and ran across this:

Paddles on the Potomac, History on the Shore
It's a travel piece about kayaks in Maryland, which begins like this:

ON a morning heavy with summer, our five candy-colored sea kayaks sliced almost silently over a dead-calm section of river, cleaving wavy lines through pewter folds of water. Gauzy clouds hung motionless in the pale sky. Not a breath of air stirred as we paddled rhythmically along.

What does this have to do with NaNoWriMo? Well, as I said, I was thinking about the mad dash of writing a full 50K novel in 30 days. I happen to like the opening of this article. I don't have a clue what my novel will be about ... or who my characters will be ... or anything really. But I like this opening. And I like the title, too. So I ran the title through my brain's word processor and came up with a play on the NYT title:

Puddles on the Pavement, Footprints on the Floor

Okay, I've never heard of a novelist starting her story with the title. And what in the world would I do with puddles, pavement, footprints, and a floor? I dunno, but I'm thinking about it. That's probably the first step, right? For now, though, the title is simply purple prose, in a puddle. Or would that be, in a muddle?

If you want to read the NYT article, click on the title. If you are interested in writing a novel, click on NaNoWriMo.