Another Chapter Down

When you work for yourself, Sunday tends to be a work day just like any other. Sunday also has lots of distractions like football games and, for me, indoor soccer. The game today was in the mid-afternoon, which gave me time to write a chapter today, which I did. It came in at 2632 words and took a bit longer than normal to write. This was because I needed to revise my map to make some things work and because I needed to hit the Bible to pull up some quotations.

The map revision was the harder part of the two. Geography has certain realities that must be accounted for, involving rates of travel and lines of supply. I had to make sure I had a location that had strategic value and good lines of supply, otherwise there would be no reason for it to exist. It had to be in a position to constitute a threat, and yet be far enough away that heading over to it and wiping it out wasn’t going to be a stroll in the park. (And I still don’t know how I will take it apart, but that’s a problem for later.)

And the toughest part of all that was actually finding an eraser to make map revisions. (You don’t want to know where I found it.)

The map alterations got put on my large map of the world, then also got copied into a tactical map in my notebook. (It’s located right below the notes I made on Bible passages. Those are in pen, the map in pencil.) I’m not sure how the American publisher or German publisher will handle the maps. It would be kind of cool to have tactical maps scattered around the book. If not, I’ll put them on the website for those who want to approach this more as historical fiction than fantasy. I know that not every reader is concerned with logistics, but I have a fair number who are. I tend to be a bit of a logistics nerd anyway, and I’d go insane if I didn’t actually make sure things synced up.

I’m officially halfway through the novel and things are on track. Things have not gone exactly the way I thought they would, but that’s also fairly standard when it comes to books. The story is much better for the differences between where I thought it would be and where it is, so I’m happy with the progress. I’m very much enjoying writing this book and, as I have said elsewhere, this work is much too hard to do if you are not having fun.

The week was a fairly productive one. In six days I added just over 25,000 words to the manuscript. I need to do that this next week. On the plus side, I get Monday which I didn’t have last week. On the bad side, I have two half days at the end of the week, and then I shall be out of town until late Sunday. While I will have my computer with me, I don’t know if I will get work done. But one thing I will make sure of is that if I do get work done, it’s backed up on a thumb drive so I won’t lose it in case of a crash.

November Word Count: Hard: 25392 Soft: 5617