This time last year, I was preparing to drive across Texas to research the setting for the novel I was writing as a NaNoWriMo project. It’s called The Silent Desert and is set in the Sanderson-Marathon-Alpine-Marfa region of the state on Highway 90. I had written about 80% of the book by this point, and I wanted to return to the area, a place I’d only been once about a dozen years earlier, to get some local color. A valuable trip, as I discovered how faulty internet research can be, especially as it pertains to getting a geographic sense of location. Nothing beats being there in person to see, smell, touch, taste and hear a place.
This year, I’m taking my NaNoWriMo novel on the road again. I passed the 50K word mark this morning, which means the manuscript is about 70K words long, and about 15-20K from being finished in first draft. I’m going to print it out, have it spiral bound, and take it with me on another trip. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I discovered a new element that I need to thread into the book, and this seems like something I can do while away from the computer.
Here’s an interesting look at my progress on the NaNo project during November. Green bars represent word count. If there’s a red section above the green (oft-seen in the first dozen days or so), then I was behind the required daily pace to hit 50,000 words for the month. Totally red bars mean I wrote nothing that day. If the green bar is on top of a grey bar, that means I was ahead of the pace, and you can see the required words-per-day rate drop off the closer I got to the target.
What can I say? I like charts and graphs.
Got caught up on some taped TV shows last night. Finally watched The Amazing Race from Sunday evening. Very pleased with the outcome. The team that was ousted has been too passive of late and made some genuinely stupid moves if they were serious about winning $1 million. When the game gets down to so few teams, alliances can only be temporary, as with the top two teams. I think the first two teams to finish made a clever decision to pool money on the taxi they followed, realizing full well that once they reached their destination, it was back to competition mode. The ousted team waited around for another team to finish their challenge, losing the advantage. Gah!
