IT’S BEEN A QUIET FEW DAYS at the Fitness at 50 household, primarily because I’m spending a lot of time writing. It’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and my goal this month is a novel, from scratch, of at least 50,000 words. I’m trying for an average of 2,000 words per day, which is tough given a full-time day job, and Aikido and running in the evenings, but so far I’m close.

So what is my novel about? At this point I will say only that it is science fiction and it’s in very rough form. I spent a few days in October putting together character sketches and a plot summary, but the story itself is just sort of coming out as I write and think about the next day’s direction.

I won’t be sharing much of it for a while; the idea is to use November just to write, and not do any editing until December. That means what I’m writing now – the first draft – is very rough and full of unfinished ideas and conversations. Even the main plot has shifted a couple of times already, but that’s okay. It’s all part of the adventure.

I did find time this weekend to make a pie, at the request of my daughter, and who can turn down that kind of request? Here’s a photo of the finished pie. Can you guess what kind it is?

Give up? If you guessed it’s a custard type of pie, you are essentially correct. But I’ll bet you don’t know its featured ingredient. Here’s a photo of a slice, although I doubt it’ll be much of a hint.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, especially because I have no idea if anyone’s bothered to get this far in the post anyway. (Reading about writing is rather like watching golf. No, scratch that, it’s even more boring.) Anyway, along with sugar, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, and a touch of maple syrup, the featured ingredient is…well, here’s the recipe:

Apple cider vinegar? That’s right! I never would’ve thought you could make a pie featuring vinegar. And yet, the result is not sour at all – it’s sweet and tangy. Now you can definitely taste the vinegar, and it stays with you a bit, so I think I’ll play with it some more before I officially add it to The Recipes I Am Famous For. My daughter is a big fan of it, however.

P.S. The title of this post comes from an article I read online that talks about proper paragraph structure. You can read it here.