It’s the final day of NaNoWriMo, and time for a final word count – I’m winding up the month with 35,026 words, right on my second goal of hitting 35K.  My highest single day was 2,010, and my lowest single day was 596, which was actually today – I probably could have done a bit more, but I hit the end of a chapter, and I liked the roundness of landing so close to 35,000.  And it was nice to have a light day at the end!

According to my outline, I’m a little over a third of the way through the story, and as to history, I’ve moved from July of 1939 to October of 1939 – though we’re about to move very quickly on to May of 1940 when the war heated up in France.

I’ve really enjoyed this dive into the story and return to NaNoWriMo after skipping last year.  I’m still engaged with my characters and my plot, and I’m planning to continue working on the draft in the next couple of months.  My goal is to do 20K each in December and January, which will hopefully bring me to the end of the story…maybe?  We’ll see if it turns out to be longer than that!

For NaNo, here’s one last excerpt – I’ve been wanting to get Erik’s opinion of the Eiffel Tower into a story for years, but since the previous books were set before the Tower was built, this was my first opportunity!

“So,” Paul said, and I could hear the smile in his voice, “what did your grandfather think of the Eiffel Tower?”  He had learned to ask this whenever architecture or music came up.  I kept offering Grand-père’s opinion, until I realized I was doing it and tried to stop.  Then Paul started asking.

I laughed now, remembering.  “He thought it was a nice idea they should have finished.”

“What do you mean?” Paul asked, looking towards the Tower.  “Isn’t it finished?”

“Everyone else thinks so.  You know the Opera has a steel frame under all that marble and façade?  Grand-père thought the Eiffel Tower was a nice frame and they ought to have put something on it.”