Day 11

Word count: 17,086... 1,252 words behind schedule, but making progress again

Am forging on... The first act as it were is complete, the stage set for the 2nd act where my characters are going to have to show what they are made of. I had wanted to include historical data and spent a good deal of time in the weeks prior to NaNoWriMo gathering source material. I am finding that I am only using a very small percentage of the information I have, and am scrambling to find information about very practical things I hadn't even thought of.

Does anyone happen to know anything about the history of trains in Germany and the Netherlands? Trains and meetings on trains seem to keep popping up, and I had originally thought to set the story in the last two decades of the 19th century. And if a lady were to go to a concert of Bach in Munster (with umlaut) where would she go? And could she take a train home to her fashionable neighborhood just outside Munster (still with umlaut)? And are there any fashionable neighborhoods just outside Munster (you betcha, umlaut again)?

You get the idea.

I read somewhere in the guide book that it is legal to invent facts if necessary, to be researched and edited at some later point. Am afraid though that if I miss too many stitches, I'll have to pull the whole thing out, wind up my wooly fiction back into a ball and start over...

Quote for the day (to leave you with a fine metaphor written by a guy who knew what he was doing):

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Maddy: What are french fries made of? Us: Potatoes.
Maddy: What are potatoes made of? Us: Potatoes.
Maddy: Here, have my pickle. Us: Why, you like pickles.
Maddy: What are pickles made of? Us: Cucumbers.
Maddy: Oh. It looks like they are made of frog...

Maddy can explain how milk is really made of grass. She goes into such wonderful detail, her teacher asked her to go to another classroom to explain it to the children there. Maddy said the boy she likes in that class listened with his mouth wide open, he was so surprised... hee hee.