Word count: 63701 | Since last entry: 2223 | This month: 6654 Finished chapter 6, in a marathon morning of writing that ran right down to the wire: I finished typing just 30 minutes before crit group. Whew! Despite the speed with which I finished the chapter, I feel pretty good about it. I even remembered to spell-check it this time. Wrote three scenes today: Honor and Raptor arguing about whether or not to take extreme measures with the humans (showing the depths of rancor between Wind Mountain and Green Hills clans), Clarity dealing with a ship that’s refusing to land but insists on being refueled for an immediate trip home (setting up an important revelation), and a brief nasty cliffhanger ending. Then I got my critique of chapter E (despite the fact it said chapter D, with the wrong date, at the top of the first page — oops!). People generally agreed that it was a travelogue chapter in which not much happened, but on the other hand it was engagingly written and conveyed some necessary information. Sara had some good hints about how to improve some of the character relationships. Everyone thought Commander Smith was unconvincing; he seemed too eccentric to have risen to the top of the organization. Since the chapter may be too long for its weight anyway, I might just drop him — I don’t think he’ll be figuring in the story again. But you never can tell! I failed to note yesterday that I passed 60,000 words. Quite a milestone. Even though I have finished my chapter, I will NOT NOT NOT allow myself to slack off now. I am going to write something tomorrow, because my goal for the month is still to write every day. It might be the next chapter, or it might be a new prologue, heading toward a revised three-chapters-and-outline for the John T. Lupton “New Voices In Literature” contest (deadline 4/5, with a $12,500 prize for fiction and another for non-fiction). If I write 500 words every day for the next 3 weeks, that’s 10,500 words — enough for both a new prologue and a new chapter! But tonight I am going to bed early.