NaNoWriMo 2014 - I did it!

With one day to spare, I made it to 50,000 words - 50,374 to be exact! Today I wrote over 4,000 words to finish NaNoWriMo, my first one. Now I will left my draft sit for a few days before I begin editing. It wasn't easy with a full-time job and two side jobs, but I made it. I conquered NaNoWriMo!

The Glassblower by Petra Durst-Benning

This was a Kindle First free book and looked like the most interesting of the four that were offered. It is a historical family story/romance set in Germany during the Victorian era. The three Steinmann sisters, Johanna, Ruth, and Marie, are left alone when their father, Joost, dies unexpectedly. He was a glassblower, as are most of the men in the town of Lauscha. The three sisters have no work experience but a neighboring glassblower hires all three of them out of pity. Johanna soon gets fired for mouthing off, but finds a job in another town with a really creepy boss. Ruth "falls in love" with one of the boss's sons, and Marie discovers she has a lot of talent for designing and decorating glass objects.

The book follows the three sisters as they grow into adulthood and learn to take care of themselves. There is some sex, and a pretty disturbing sexual assault. The book is obviously very well researched as far as the glassblowing industry, and shows women in a positive light for the most part. Ruth is a bit of a doofus though and makes some terrible choices.

Maybe something was lost in the translation, but the book didn't really draw me in. It was interesting enough to keep reading, but not emotionally engaging. It is very well written though.

NaNoWriMo Week 2

One week down for NaNoWriMo, and I have 18,767 words so far! I am still ahead of the diagonal line that gets me to 50K by November 30. And, just a few minutes ago I finally figured out how I'm going to reach the climactic moment in my story. I had been struggling with how to get there since I'm writing in first person POV. But as I was making up stuff today, it just fell into place. Yay!!!

I know week 2 is going to be harder to stay on task - but as long as I write a little every night I should be OK. The weekends are for catching up. And if I do fall behind, I have four days at Thanksgiving to make it up. This is definitely doable!