In November of 2004, I didn’t write a novel. This is a series of excerpts from all the novels I didn’t write that month.

She was writing on paper so thin the ink was bleeding onto the table. Indelible marks on the forty-year-old Formica. So obviously this was the end of nothing. Hints of thoughts were there beyond scrubbing and bleach. They had to know that.

The pen moved carefully, its tip fine enough to tear the paper in a sudden surge of emotion. She remained reined in and solitary. Each letter self-contained. Deliberate. She crackled underneath the stoic scratching.

A thunk against the window. Her hand jerked with her head, made gift-wrap crinkling noises as the page crumpled and tore. Thoughts became pianos and singing and cackling chatter. Her fingers pulled the rest of the page into her fist.

She had never believed in bad timing. It was foolish and elastic against the rigid reality of choices. Leeway thinking, as if there could have been another route. She stared at the table. Not a complete word in the ink tracings. Just self-important permanence. She wondered if there were any way a bird could survive an eight-story fall after being stunned against a window.