Writing: 1,343 words
I haven't really written myself into a corner so much as I've run myself up against a bit of a wall.
I've followed Michael all the way up to the edge of Operation Persephone, a nickname I gave to this section of the story back when Bill Clinton was still President. He briefly considered dumping the Wagoneer at the 30th Street Station and catching a train to some undiscovered country before dismissing the idea. He then made a couple of tenuous mental connections, dug up some old information that took on new significance, and is now poised to embark upon this unwritten path of his own.
He needs only one piece of information to start down the long and curving course, and that's the wall I'm up against. He has an unlisted phone number and a first name, and he needs to use them to figure out where the phone-number's owner lives. If it's too far out of the way, he almost certainly won't bother, but then maybe he will, because he's got nothing but time and a full tank of gas. But it isn't too far out of the way. In fact, it's barely an hour-long drive straight up Route 30.
The issue is that Michael's story predates Google by about six months, occurring late in the third quarter of the 2G cellphone era. And whereas today I could easily search the reverse phone number lookup at WhitePages.com on my smartphone and find the city of likely origin for an unlisted number, Michael has much more limited access to information. I've been rolling the problem around in my head for the past few days as I've written my way up to it, and here I am and I haven't found a satisfactory solution yet.
So at the moment, it's starting to look like my best option will be to sit down at a blank page and write until I discover an answer.
I wrote 1,343 words in two sections last night, bringing the total manuscript to 91,375 words. Then, for kicks and grins, I also totaled up my wordcounts just for the last two-and-a-half weeks, covering only the time that I've been engaged in this grand experiment. And what I discovered startled me: I have written more than 21,000 words in the last eighteen days.
And that, frankly, blows my everloving mind.
I've followed Michael all the way up to the edge of Operation Persephone, a nickname I gave to this section of the story back when Bill Clinton was still President. He briefly considered dumping the Wagoneer at the 30th Street Station and catching a train to some undiscovered country before dismissing the idea. He then made a couple of tenuous mental connections, dug up some old information that took on new significance, and is now poised to embark upon this unwritten path of his own.
He needs only one piece of information to start down the long and curving course, and that's the wall I'm up against. He has an unlisted phone number and a first name, and he needs to use them to figure out where the phone-number's owner lives. If it's too far out of the way, he almost certainly won't bother, but then maybe he will, because he's got nothing but time and a full tank of gas. But it isn't too far out of the way. In fact, it's barely an hour-long drive straight up Route 30.
The issue is that Michael's story predates Google by about six months, occurring late in the third quarter of the 2G cellphone era. And whereas today I could easily search the reverse phone number lookup at WhitePages.com on my smartphone and find the city of likely origin for an unlisted number, Michael has much more limited access to information. I've been rolling the problem around in my head for the past few days as I've written my way up to it, and here I am and I haven't found a satisfactory solution yet.
So at the moment, it's starting to look like my best option will be to sit down at a blank page and write until I discover an answer.
I wrote 1,343 words in two sections last night, bringing the total manuscript to 91,375 words. Then, for kicks and grins, I also totaled up my wordcounts just for the last two-and-a-half weeks, covering only the time that I've been engaged in this grand experiment. And what I discovered startled me: I have written more than 21,000 words in the last eighteen days.
And that, frankly, blows my everloving mind.