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This week’s thrilling installment of Worth a Thousand is called Pruning. It might be about someone cutting plants; or it might be about someone who’s been soaking in the tub since noon. In either case, it features some amazing artwork by Patrick McEvoy, a freelance illustrator who would love to do some similar work for you. Check out his site, drop him a line. Tell him Darrell sent you.

This is the last full week of November, the home stretch for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve got 44,000 words in the bank. They’re not all good words: Many are mispelled, grammatically incorrect, or strung together in sentences that would my tenth-grade English teacher weep. But there 44,000 of them, and that’s all that matters.

Only 6000 more by next Monday to “win” NaNoWriMo.

That might happen. We’re going to be on the road for the next five days. While we’re bringing the laptop computer, but I suspect the moment the car stops moving we’ll be asleep, up to our ears in joyful family festivities, or both. And that’s okay. There’s no prize for winning, aside from the glow of satisfaction. And I can get that the first week of December, if that’s when I get around to finishing the thing.

I should point out how wonderful my beautiful literary agent wife has been through all of this. She’s been extremely supportive, even going so far as to take the girls out for two afternoons of fun last weekend, leaving me home alone to write for a while on Saturday and Sunday. I made huge strides those days, and owe her a debt of thanks… A debt that can only be repaid by taking the girls out for two afternoons of fun some weekend.

On the NaNoWiMo forums, I found a post recommending this awesome site: Write Or Die.

The site is not a text editor, but it has a field where you can type. And if you stop typing for more than a few second (a range you can edit), the site reminds you to keep writing. This reminder may come in the form of gentle pop-up, an annoying sound effect, or (if you’re hard core) deleting your words before your very eyes.

Like many, I find it hard to turn off my internal editor and just put words on the page. Which makes Write or Die a great tool. For anyone else in my boat (welcome!) I can’t recommend this site enough. I expect to be using it quite a bit the rest of the month.

“Half way through the party, old Slaggorn tracks me down where I’m shooting the breeze with the baroness. He’s smiling and insulting me without really insulting me — you know, nothing you can officially take offense at — and I just blow him off. I never was much good at the social games those lords and ladies like to play. I’m ignoring him, but I can tell he’s getting mad, so then he starts in on the baroness.

“Now, the baroness, she knows how to play these word games. She starts sparring with him, upping the ante, until she’s got him cornered. He either has to shut up and walk away, or step across that line and say something truly insulting. Either way, with all those fancy folks standing around watching, Slaggorn wasn’t going to get out of there with his honor intact.

“If he were a calmer man, Slaggorn would have graciously admitted defeat, offered a toast to the baroness, and spent the rest of the party on the far side of the boat. But if he were a calmer man, he wouldn’t have been Slaggorn. And he was mad. He didn’t pause for more than a second before he dove across that line.”

The old man finished off his bottle and reached for another.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He insinuated that the baroness had killed her father when she chose to marry the baron.  Gave him a broken heart, he said. And then he said her father was better off dead, because he couldn’t see what his daughter had done to the family name.

“I couldn’t let that stand. I challenged that pompous ass to a duel. Reckon I had my sword in hand before he even accepted. If he’d said no, I probably would have run him through then and there.

The old man laughed and handed me a beer. I saw three empty bottles already sweating on the floor next to his chair.

“Fallin’ off the roof was nothing,” he said. “Now falling out of the doggone sky – now that’s a fright.”

I smiled and leaned back. That was all the encouragement he needed.

“This is when I was… overseas, of course. I was on one of them flying boats they had over there, like I told you about. Well, this one was the biggest I’d ever seen. It was like an aircraft carrier — huge! You could have three or four football games going on at the same time on that thing.

“Well, the baroness was holding one of her masked balls on this thing, and of course she invited Slaggorn. Out of courtesy, mind you — I told you about the tussle him and me got into back in the desert — nobody thought he’d show up — but the S.O.B. not only shows up, he brings his full retinue and makes a grand entrance!”

He chuckled to himself and took a long pull on his bottle.