I was thinking this week about how retirement (age) has made me forgetful about some things. For example, this week I totally forgot why I was supposed to be happy it was Friday!
I think there is also something about my brain running out of my fingers onto the keyboard. I went to take a nap and could not stop thinking about San Francisco--one of my favorite cities--the location of a scene I was writing in Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon.
Speaking of which... The writing of my current NaNoWriMo project is going well. I've averaged 5,000 words per day so far, which means the story is currently 70,000 words in length. Likelihood is that I'm about halfway through it. I've really enjoyed letting Bob take control and run on about his adventures over the past 4000 years. At the same time, I've had to do insane amounts of research in order to not sound like a total idiot when I'm talking about Alexander the Great or ancient India.
And then there is the sudden bouncing to, say 1955 San Francisco and the beat generation. Here's something funny. Back circa 2000 BCE, a fellow received some gifts from a god of war that included a drum. I didn't say much about the drum in that episode, but in '55, Bob gets enthused about the beat crowd in SF and pulls out his old drum to go join them. But I didn't know exactly what the drum looked like or how it was played. I just had a vague notion of what I wanted.
I sent a message to a drummer friend and asked if he'd ever come across an ancient Persian war drum that was held between the knees as it was played with hands and changed pitch when it was squeezed with the drummer's knees. If so, what was it called?
He wrote back that he'd check it out but it sounded like he needed to get one. Within half an hour I got a response to the question indicating he thought it was called a djun-djun and was most popular in West Africa, but extended all across Northern Africa and was probably around Persia as well. He sent a picture and it was exactly what I imagined the drum to look like!
So, now you know that the reason my stories sound like I know so much is all research. And asking friends who know things.
BTW, what coin was used as a monetary unit in India, circa 300 CE?