What Would You Do?

I'm watching Part 2 of Ken Burns's "The Dust Bowl," a history of the late 1920's through the 1930's in the southern Great Plains of the United States. I love Ken Burns and the way he puts together his documentaries focused on small slices of American History. I think I first got to know his work through his "Civil War" series, but his first documentary was "The Great Bridge" (which was outstanding), telling the story of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. He has a long litany of documentary films: "The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God", "The Statue of Liberty", "Thomas Jefferson", "Baseball" and "Jazz". He explored World War II in "The War". In 2010 he directed "The National Parks: America's Best Idea". He has six documentaries underway right now including "Vietnam", scheduled for release in 2016.

His style is laid back, informative and focuses on individual people to bring the subjects closer to his audience. They alternate between pictures and authentic film clips interspersed with interviews and vignettes of survivors, historians and descendants. I enjoy his style - slow, methodical, and informative. My DH is less of a fan, but he watches because I want to. I love history, which is why when I wanted to write my own novel, I wanted to incorporate history into it, to give it a framework of reality to hang my curtains upon.

And so, because I am sure all of you are sick unto death of my talking about NaNoWriMo, I will only say that I passed the 50,000 word level today. I will post again at the end of the month to let you know my total word count for November, but I succeeded in the challenge and I enjoyed and am still enjoying the writing process. I think in the end that it will be at least twice the length that it currently is, and that's really a good thing because a novel of 50,000 words is really more like a novella. A year ago I thought NaNo was an impossible and unattainable goal. A year ago was a long time ago in my practice as an author and I have still have a long way to go. But, step-by-step and word-by-word I started weaving the story of Maddy and Daniel, working to bring them together and make a cohesive whole. It's been a fun ride and there are still hills to climb and ride down.