1,002 words today. So far, so good.

And considering how the past 36 hours have gone, that’s saying something.

Sunday afternoon, I returned home from my parents’ home to find several drops of water on the piano. I looked up to see a wet spot on the ceiling and several more drops of water that were clearly about to fall.

Things happened quickly after that. I wiped up the water, moved the photographs off the piano, and draped plastic over the piano to protect it. Then I moved it over a couple feet and placed a bucket beneath the wet spot on the ceiling. I took everything out of the front hall closet and headed up to the attic to find out where the leak originated.

It didn’t take long to locate it. With the rain drumming on the roof, the drip was nearly constant. I fetched several old towels from the laundry basket, a couple of unused litter boxes from the garage, a small headlamp from a drawer, and some garbage bags from the kitchen. I returned to the attic to pull up the wet insulation and position the litter boxes to catch the water. Then, I texted my neighbor for the number of her roofer and poured a large glass of wine.

Eventually, I focused enough to do some of the work I’d intended to get to hours earlier, but my attention span didn’t last long. It took a Schitt’s Creek marathon to relax me enough for sleep.

Monday was technically a holiday, but for practical purposes, it was a work day. Even so—and solely because of the #1000wordsofsummer challenge—I took a break around 6:00 and wrote a new scene for my novel.

Turns out that making the decision to do the challenge and announcing it publicly was the push I needed to get back to the novel. Today’s 1,000 words were a start.

A drop in the bucket, if you will.