Long time, no post
Word count for NANOWRIMOQuarter (plus maybe a few extra weeks):
49,818 (plus about 35,000 words of related matter, but we won't talk about that)
Alright, so maybe I took a teensy head start. Only about 1,400 of that was done on November 1st. (Oh my GOD! I've fallen behind already!)
And not all of the forty-nine thousand and something words are dedicated to the story itself. I've made a habit of inserting reminders to do research on certain things, as well as notes to myself (or others). An example of these notes includes a little gem from this passage...
"Yes, they are," Nev agreed, a little spooked by the comparison. "But you said you had, or you still have, two intelligent species that have evolved on Gaia? That's rare, from what I understand, anyway."
"It is," Lucer allowed. "The other intelligent species is commonly called the Aerie..."
(Note: I'm obligated to make a record of this -- the timing was practically supernatural. (I started drafting this note immediately after this quiet little incident.) I was still in the process of considering a name for this other intelligent species inhabiting Gaia in the late Cretaceous period, and "Aerie" -- of various spellings -- was one of the less likely names I was considering for either a permanent name or as a placeholder name (see the "teching the tech" discussion). But as I was walking along the Washington Park trail writing this (Note for the LJ readers: as some of you know, I possess the strange talent to walk and write at the same time), a woman jogged past me on my left. I glanced at her ass -- I admit it -- as she jogged by me, and on the upper ass area of her sweat pants was the word "Aerie." (Probably this company, which I never knew existed until now.) In response to this amazing coincidence (message from God?) I did the only thing I could do, which was stop dead in my tracks, let my notebook and pen hang to my sides -- nearly dropping the pen -- and watch blankly as this woman's "Aerie"-clad butt bounced off in the distance. Then I scribbled out what you see above. So now I'm pretty much committed to use "Aerie" as a name of Gaia's other intelligent species.)
...
So that's the writing process for ya (at least in my amateur opinion).
Also, I probably should take this as a sign to modify my personal writing process a little -- maybe I should make a point to look up from my notebook more often, glance at women's posteriors as I write and walk along the Washington Park trail, and look for more secret messages there.