Paksworld

When my first published story came out,  I was startled at how differently it read, set in a two-column layout.  I’d been worried the story wouldn’t feel fast-paced enough–but in that format, it flew by, almost too fast-paced.   That was my first experience of how the choice of layout affects a story.

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There’s nothing like actually turning off everything else and convincing the distractable mind that no, it cannot do anything until it’s produced the day’s wordage.  No, we are not playing Solitaire.  No, we are not reading email.  No, we are not checking Twitter, or LJ, or the SFF.net newsgroup.   The television is off limits.   The new red shiny netbook is off limits.   The outdoors is off limits.   Cooking is off limits.  (Dishwashing isn’t.)    The piano is off limits.  This chair, this keyboard, this one file.  First.

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Book III has decided it wants to be written and is now making my hand hurt (a good thing) with the download from Storybrain through my arm into the computer.    Every day this week has been more productive than the last, even though I’m trying not to overwork the more vulnerable right hand.   Today I stopped just short of 3000 words and will no doubt toss in another paragraph later when I’ve rested my hand to top that off.

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Isn’t it nice to know that Paks never had to face a word like “metric?”   But I do, and so today was the day that a) I emailed the maps to Editor and b) put all the loose chunks of Book III into one file, more or less in order (but not eliminating the need to write things in between them.)    That meant I could count the total number of pages…and words…and figure out where I was compared to where I wanted to be.

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Book has loosened up and is moving.  I’ve been writing in Stammel’s POV today because, in the early hours of the day, lying in bed, I had a whole bunch of vague ideas suddenly crystallize.   No, I don’t know all of his story yet, but I know much more about the deep history, which his companion at the moment knows.

Not enough words yet, but I had non-writing work today that had to be done, and is partly done, with frequent 15-20 minute escapes to the computer.   I need to start making notes ahead in a side-file.    Right now,  I need to get with it and continue working on the house stuff.   And looking at the music for tomorrow wouldn’t hurt either.

I knew re-entry to the book itself might be tricky, as despite brief spurts  it’s been on hold while the map got done.    The spurts, never very long, had gone well, though, and I was hoping that Book would keep in mind that it had not been locked in a closet forgotten.     However, Book has its own ideas of how long is too long, and when today I sat down to get back to work on it for a several hour stretch, it ignored me.    Hmmm, I thought, and opened this file and that (at this point, in a multi-viewpoint work, the viewpoints are separate files), trying to find a character who was awake,  coherent,  and doing more than staring into space with a mind full of vague somethings.

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Time has not been kind to the old drafting table, but the internet has been–because when I looked up used and new drafting tables, I found one for sale boasting of its Vyco cover.    That’s the kind of cover my mother had on her big table at the oil company she worked for.    So I asked the blueprint place if they carried it, and they did, and yesterday I picked up a piece of about the right size for this table.  Here’s what it looked like before:

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You’ve seen much of this before, in the Oath of Fealty map, but there are some additions.

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Still working on the map(s).    I’m going to have to take the current set of “stuff” down to the city again to the bigger scanners & copiers.  But I got a halfway decent photo of the west map (not perfectly aligned…standing on step-stool above the drafting table with only a room light and the camera flash…trying not to wiggle and also not fall off the stool…

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