I spent the day researching for my story, which is set in ancient Gaul. At some point, I switched to researching writing itself. This led me to scrap my existing outline in favor of a 20 chapter mass paperback structure. I feel it will give my story a more coherent framework. So now I have a lot of questions to answer about characters and their motivations. If you don't know your characters, how can you accurately speak for them?
I want to write using CardTxt on the Alphasmart Dana. For the prep work, however, I have decided to use AlphaWord on the Dana. The ease of switching between files made this choice. AlphaWord is a rebranded version of WordSmith for Palm OS (which i actually paid for around 2000, but my reg code is long gone). AW does not save to plaintext files. It uses a modified PalmDoc file format. I have WordSmith on my PEG-UX50, and can do file conversion there. I want to write my actual story in plaintext files, thus CardTxt.
Even though it is currently far from November, once I have sufficient research completed (next up on the docket: Celtic religion in general, Gaulish in particular, and a comparison with German/Scandinavian and other European flavors as well. As my core idea revolves around a meta- physical happening, I think the time investment is worth it.), I would like to set a goal to keep a NaNoWriMo kinda pace. This may be asking a lot, but with good notes and a good outline it shouldn't be too difficult. I guess time will tell if it is a goal I will meet.