Thoughts.

• You can learn a lot about a character just by writing them being drunk.  Stuff came out that I wasn't expecting.  I learned:  "Wow, yeah, that's where we're going now with this.  I guess it was meant to be."  Unexpected turns are unexpected.  And valuable.

• Note to self:  try writing drunk.
  

• There has been a sad history of elephant captivity.
  
  
• Probably the most challenging thing is character naming.  They've got to mean something, fit the characters/world/time-period, and not sound stupid.  My Elephant is not a Mary Sue, so I need to be careful her name doesn't sound like one.
  
  
• It's amazing how much I've written already that I won't even use in this story.  Is that common?  Some of it was intentional, some unintentional.  I discovered one of the first scenes I wrote actually takes place in two years, so it can't be used. 
  
  
• One of the main things I've learned is the concept of restraint—not to lay everything out on the table, and if you do, don't do it all at once.  Be it character descriptions, plot, setting, whatever.  I can get all Tolkienish and describe everything down to a T if I wanted, but I'm purposefully forcing myself to hold back, especially more this time than with Dichotomy.  I have to let the plot speak for itself and back out of Edmund and Susan's minds a bit more.  Even though being in Ed's head is awesome.
  
  
• Wow, I had no idea you could track traffic stats on ff.net.  The ratio of story hits to reviews is alarming!