Paksworld

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.

The east half of the new map may be ready to photograph…when it’s printed, you’ll notice some tributaries you didn’t see before (hadn’t needed them before) and some towns, strongholds, etc.  The west half is still being worked on.  The southwest corner has acquired another range of mountains.

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Here’s the current state of the map.   I’m about ready to pull the undersheets of details to be transferred and continue with the empty spots.

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We moved the old drafting table over from the other house (had been my mother’s after she moved up here,  then guest-house, then son’s house for a couple of years) to what is now the spare bedroom in this house.  Only it’s not going to be a spare bedroom–it’s going to be a drawing/painting/graphics room.  The old drafting table, now well over 60 years old, is pretty beat-up, so I’m using a piece of plexiglass on top of the (rapidly delaminating) original maple veneer top.  The tilt mechanism doesn’t work anymore–my mother stabilized it with a pair of extra “legs” that fixed it at one tilt.   (Yes, I could maybe get a newer used one, or a new one, but this is the drafting table I remember from early childhood.   A “don’t touch” zone that I violated only a few times…most notably the time I used my mother’s big T-square as a hobby-horse.  Once.  The repercussions were convincing.)

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Thanks to the packing and preparation for moving M- into an apartment in the city, writing time has remained minimal this week…but some progress is happening, at least in my head.   I hope and expect to have a sort of microburst of writing when he’s installed, writing it all down in sequence rather than rough notes.

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Another snippet from Kings of the North today.   This may be one I posted in an earlier draft last year, but as someone said, there are people new to the place who probably don’t want to hunt through the archives for everything I said back then.    As before, there may be mild spoilers incorporated, so if you’re spoiler-averse,  don’t read beyond the break.

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I spend a couple of hours with Book III yesterday (all I had, due to Other Things) and had fun with the inimitable Arvid.   I don’t know how much of this will fit in the final Book III–but it’s such fun to write.  As with the story of the King of Pargun and his difficult daughter Elis, that we put up  on the publisher’s blog site, I’ll find it a home somewhere even if it can’t stay in the book proper.

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…of copy edits corrected.    There are only (!) 39 chapters, but more words in the last nineteen than in the first twenty.

I quit after finishing chapter 20, a few minutes ago.  Tired.  Tired of all the little red marks and having to check every single one.  Copy-editing is a tough job for the copy-editor, but the CE’s job is one of marking anything that strikes him or her as off.

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