As if you didn’t know that already.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But last year’s goof (not recognized as a goof at the time)\u00a0 has made the last week….difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m swiping a post I made over at SFF.net\u00a0 so I don’t have to write the embarrassing thing twice, but being a writer, I had to edit and revise it.<\/p>\n
The smart writer\/cartographer stores EVERY version of maps for the book in the same map tube<\/em> or she regrets it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s not like I hadn’t already lost one master map, 20-odd years ago.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But sure enough…<\/p>\n Regret, worry, frustration has been the story of my days since this time last week, when the master map was finally getting flat enough to really look at.<\/p>\n And I discovered that data in the map for Oath of Fealty<\/em> had never made it onto the master.\u00a0 And I remembered why (after the first hours of shock and horror) but that didn’t help.\u00a0 In order to get the Oath<\/em> map done more quickly, and with less chance of a kitchen accident ruining the whole thing, I had blocked out the master map–and then, realizing how long it would take to finish the whole thing, traced what I’d done so far onto a smaller piece of drafting vellum and worked that (which covered the area needed for Oath<\/em>) into final form.\u00a0 The smaller piece also fit on the kitchen table without lopping over the side, and was easier to protect. \u00a0 I made several versions,\u00a0 deciding what would still show when the map was reduced, etc.<\/p>\n For reasons known not to me at this point, I then stored the big map and its various backup sheets in a large map tube, but put the smaller sheets into a smaller map tube not<\/em> in the same place as the big map tube.\u00a0 Can we say REALLY BAD IDEA?\u00a0 I thought we could.\u00a0 I certainly can.<\/p>\n In the course of the year, the small map tube got buried in other stuff.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I knew where the big one was. I had forgotten that all the data hadn’t been transferred back to the big map (including some important tributaries of rivers, the location of Duke’s Stronghold and so on) and the reason for THAT was having to dive into other things the minute the map was done.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, the ideal writer\/cartographer would have remembered, and in the first spare moment would have carefully traced onto the master anything on the sub-map that wasn’t there yet.\u00a0 (Spare moments?\u00a0 I’ve heard of that, but never actually SEEN one!)<\/p>\n Of course I looked in what I thought<\/em> was every map tube in the house.\u00a0 Some had prints in them.\u00a0 Some were empty.\u00a0\u00a0 That t0ok a day or so because a) I’m not the world’s most organized housekeeper and b) the house had just been disrupted by moving things around for our son’s move to an apartment.<\/p>\n In the meantime, I had decided that as a stopgap I could use the image of last year’s map in the computer, and try to find a size to print it that would match the existing master (using the twists of the Honnorgat as the criterion.)\u00a0 I now have many, many<\/em> printouts of the north half of last year’s map (what I needed) in various percentages of its full size.\u00a0\u00a0 This process was interrupted by a variety of other chores, business, household, personal, etc.<\/p>\n I had just run another series this afternoon (each one one-percent up or down from the previous) that didn’t quite fit but was closer, swearing that this was the last day I’d waste like this–I’d just have to make up (from the map in the book) those impossible-to-imitate wiggles and claim the maps in Kings<\/em> were made by a different cartographer–Tsaian?\u00a0 Finthan?\u00a0 A disgruntled Dzordanyan?–when–walking back in to print another one, the right<\/em> map tube fell onto my foot.<\/p>\n “Hi!\u00a0 I’m your friendly local desperately-needed-map-tube!\u00a0 You called?”<\/p>\n It was only a week lost.<\/p>\n Whimper.<\/p>\n The last place you look is where you find whatever it is.\u00a0\u00a0 The\u00a0 little darlings, all curly from their year in durance vile, are safe.\u00a0\u00a0 They’re now flattening, a process that takes at least 24 hours, esp. as this map tube, being smaller in diameter, curled them more tightly.\u00a0 As soon as they’ve let go a little, I’ll put them in the pad of vellum they came from, in the midst of flat sheets, and weight the whole thing.\u00a0 They should be ready to work by tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n I will never,\u00a0 no never, no never again put the pieces of that puzzle in different map tubes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (And this is why I’ve been ominously absent in here this week.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As if you didn’t know that already.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But last year’s goof (not recognized as a goof at the time)\u00a0 has made the last week….difficult.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m swiping a post I made over at SFF.net\u00a0 so I don’t have to write the embarrassing thing twice, but being a writer, I had to edit and revise it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,53,5],"tags":[112,54,11,107],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artwork","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-map","tag-mistakes","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}