To write The Time Traveler's Wife

A list of topics Audrey Niffenegger had to know or research in order to write The Time Traveler's Wife:

• Neighborhoods, streets, and lifestyle in Chicago
• Punk music
• How to pick various types of locks
• Basics of pick-pocketing
• The Newberry Library
• Paper sculpting/whatever it is that Clare does
• American popular culture and fashion by decades, roughly from 1950 to 2010
• Certain things in genetics so that what's in the book sounds plausible
• Trends in American political activism in the 1970s and 1980s
• Art history
• Pregnancy and miscarriage
• String orchestras and opera
• At least two types of cooking/culinary styles

I don't know if this sort of diversity interests anyone else.

NaNoWriMo 2010

This was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo, and I knew I wouldn't have enough time to do it.  This has been my busiest college semester ever and some days I barely have time to do any homework, let alone write for fun.  I wrote only a few days during November...my word count on November 30 was 5,429.

The annoying thing is, I probably had enough ideas to write for the whole month.  Lack of time was definitely the issue.  I'm going to continue writing over winter break because I like what I have so far and I want to keep working on this story.

Next year, I won't have to worry about homework, and that will be wonderful.