I wrote a bit over 2,000 words on the new short story today. It's at over 5,000 words now and there's still a bit to go. I'm glad I wrote the short story that ran about 4,000, AIR, before we left for Tucson, otherwise I'd be wondering if I could still write a moderate-length short story.

I am perfectly aware that working on being tight and concise would be a good thing. After this is written, we'll go through and do some cutting and see how small we can get this story.

It's kind of a fun story to write, actually. It gets back to my family's roots just a bit. I wish some of my uncles and aunts and grandparents were still alive. I imagine they could have told me all sorts of interesting things. It's called "Bison's Child" and features a few things from Lakota culture with my own spin, of course. Actually, my family is technically Ojibwe, but so many of them lived out at Wounded Knee for so long and some of them were just pretty much adopted by the tribe out there that in the end a conglomeration of beliefs, practices, etc. transfered down as one. Just another example of Pan Indianism? :)

It's also enjoyable because my minor was American Indian Studies, and so there's a tie there, too. I may be a recovering anthro geek, but it still gets me and probably will pop up for the rest of my life.

We had a great dinner tonight. It was stir fried beef with red peppers, snow peas, carrots, green onions, bean threads, garlic, mushrooms, sesame seeds and a sauce made out of lots of lovely things like sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, hoison sauce and things like that. So yay for being home and being able to cook in my own kitchen!

Time to finish getting ready for tomorrow and time to go to bed and think about how I'm going to work the next part of my story. We have some curses going on and I need to figure out exactly how this whole thing is going to work. Time for my brain to get working.

Note to self: Don't get out of the writing habit again like I did this month; it's really hard to get back into it.