So I'm late starting my NaNoWriMo novel. Better late than never. Here's the goal for today - write as much as I can in seventeen minutes. I have to go after that.

April sat on the edge of a long glassy lake. It was four times as long as it was wide, like looking at a freakishly long reflecting pool. In that pool were mosquito eggs, fish, tadpoles, rowboats, paddle boats, inner tubes, swimming tourists, and the body of Jenny Gales.

No one nowadays remembered the name of the lake before it became Jenny Gales Lake after Jenny Gales disappeared in the lake some forty years ago. Some of the senior citizens did, of course, if one wanted to sit and wait for the answer amidst ramblings of fishing spots and "the good old days". April sighed. Her grandmother was Jenny Gales and somewhere in her grandmother's lake was a secret to a hidden fortune.

April looked at her fishing line. It hadn't moved in an hour. The bait was waterlogged, she knew she ought to reel it in and put a fresh worm on the hook. The fishing wasn't important though. What was important was the thinking time. Fishing was just an excuse to spend hours by the lake with no one to bother her. April's father Ted, an avid golfer, was spending the day on the course with her uncle Jim and whoever else they found at the pro shop. April's mom, Olivia, was at the lake house with her annoying little brother Daniel and whoever he could find to tolerate his obnoxious fart noises and booger jokes. Their mom said it was a phase that all nine-year-old boys go through. He'll grow out of it when school starts again in the fall.

April was the type of girl who didn't mind spending time by herself. She enjoyed fishing, reading, or walking through the woods. Most of all, she was a thinker, an intellectual. She didn't watch television, and when she did, she was more interested in documentaries than the science fiction drivel that Daniel couldn't miss every night. She had been told that her grandmother, Dr. Jennifer Gales, had also been an intellectual. She had been a biologist studying the effects of pollution on the lake environment before she had been lost.

Time's up. blah.

Wordcount: 355 words.