Space Station Mir

It's Day 24 (secret Day 26), and I'm over 26k, already better than I did last year . However, I don't think I will hit the 50k goal. This writing process has been messier and less productive, but it's taught me that I can write in a "pants" as well as "plan" style, although my hypothesis that planning works better for me remains supported. After this month is over, I plan to see if my hypothesis that I needed more research for this project is accurate. I'm not sure how much I will need, but one month of research was clearly not enough. Three months? Perhaps. I've found that updating my word count is extremely motivating for me. Competing for my personal best compels me. When the word counter ends on Nov. 30, I'll try tracking number of research hours, since hour-tracking is a new option on the WriMo dashboard. As all the motivational messages sent to my inbox remind me, at the end of the month, I'll have more words written tha...

Day 6 of NaNoWriMo (really, Day 8, for me), and I'm up to 11, 112 words. I'm writing in bits and pieces, and I don't know what's coming each day, so it's a much more nerve-wracking process than the first time around, but it's working so far. Below is a picture of my research books, all nonfiction from my novel's time period, with the exception of The Book Thief , which I've meant to read for years, and now turned out to be the perfect moment. My favorite of the nonfiction so far is Victims and Neighbors, a study of the surviving Germans and Jews from one small town in Germany: the author's grandparents' hometown. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the subject.

It's Top Ten Tuesday over at the Broke and the Bookish ! Top Ten Characters Who Would Make Great Leaders (I tried to think mostly of characters who are/were not actually leaders...yet) 1. Jo March 2. Harriet the Spy 3. Hermione Granger 4. Felicity Merriman 5. Kestrel 6. Faramir 7. Eowyn 8. Lauren Olamina 9.