Pencils and Variations on a Theme

So today was Day 2 of NaNoWriMo. I wrote slightly less wordage than yesterday, but that was due to (1) the WiFi was down at my coffeeshop so I missed out on an hour's writing time and (2) I got involved in researching the history of pencils. Wait just a minute - pencils? Yes. I wanted my 1860's character to use a pencil and wanted to be sure that they actually existed back then and in what form they existed. So I took a few minutes to check it out - it was actually pretty darned interesting.

The yellow color that we associate with pencils originally

was put onto some to designate that they were using

Chinese graphite - thus Imperial Golden coloring.

If you are interested in checking the history out for yourself, here are two links that might help you. You never know when you might need to know esoteric information like this - LOL. Here is Pencil History and here is The History of the Lead Pencil from the Early Office Museum. Through checking these websites out I determined that my character can indeed have lead pencils in his possession. In fact, since I have his place of origin Boston, it makes a great deal of sense since many pencils originated from Massachusetts. My character was happy and so was I.



I heard a musical piece on my way home tonight that I remembered so very well. It's very famous, easy to listen to, and if you were as addicted to Might & Magic VI as I was, you heard this tune every time you entered a Temple of Ba. I hear this tune and I expect armed skeletons, Gorgons and goblins along with other nasty icky enemies to spring up in the pristine ceremonial areas of the Temples. I played that game for hour upon hour for months - had it SO nailed. I didn't particularly like M&M 7 or 8 though, so I stopped with VI. Just hearing Tomaso Albinoni's "Adagio" brings back so many memories, though. Now...back to writing. I've almost hit 6000 words now...