Weekly Writing Intentions: February, 25, 2023

Daily Diary, Day 907:

I did remarkably well in reaching my goals last week. I even stepped up the exercise and got in four days when I walked. Didn't walk today because raining all day, but today was first of major cleaning (with added fun of mopping up after husband and Leeza returned from walks where they came back soaked.)

As for writing, I did, in fact, finish the draft, writing over 5700 words over 3 days, so that I finished Monday evening. Then I did work on my tax preparations (finished them up today), got the newsletter out, and did some promotional activities. I also got my beta reader team assembled, with a head's up for when I think I will get the edited version to them. Everyone seemed excited, which is, of course, nice to hear, I only hope the manuscript doesn't disappoint.

So, what are my intentions for this coming week? Start the rewriting process, and if all goes well, maybe get at least a third, if not half of the manuscript read and revised. Today, I did some preliminary work before I start to go through chapter by chapter.

For example, I had been making a list of minor and major changes I want to make, so I examined this list and did some of the easy changes. I changed the name of a kind of animal, which I was able to use the find and replace function to do, easy-peasy. Then I made another change in a person's name, which I needed to do case by case, but the character didn't show up that often, so not too onerous.

However, the bulk of today was spent creating some documents that I will want to refer to as I read through the manuscript. First I put together a timeline (turned out the book covers exactly 21 days), to make sure I had my days of the week and dates straight, and I found a couple of places where I had gotten off.

Next, I looked back at former books in the series to see if I had given how long it took to travel between certain cities by helio (helicopter), then based on that measure, and looking a maps for my world, I estimated the approximate times to travel between various places. I needed to do that because in this new book my main protagonist flies all over the place during the 3 weeks the book takes place, and I know I wasn't consistent in saying how long it was taking to get her from place to place.

I know this is the kind of detail that most reader won't even notice, but, I care, and I suspect there are people whose brains work by noting this sort of detail who might get taken out of the story if I don't get this right.

Which brings me to what I spent this afternoon on, which is figuring out what the main moon would be doing (what phases from new moon, waxing to quarter moon, then waxing to half moon, then to full moon) during the 21 days of the book.

The planet Ddaera, (New Eden) has two moons, one that mimics the Earth's moon in terms of orbit, etc, and one small eccentric moon, Acerba, with an odd orbit. Having 2 moons has a large impact on the world, with high tides making life difficult on the coast lines for many of the Ddaerans. Therefore, it is particularly important that I get this right.

And, to be very frank, I am terrible at this sort of detail about the dance that sun, moon, and earth play on our world, much less what it would be like to live on a planet with two moons! So spelling this out so I can refer to it is important before I start writing. In fact, for awhile today I panicked because I had a scene when the full moon was high in a day-time sky, and I became convinced that for some reason that wasn't possible (although I was sure I had seen this in real life.) So after much googling, and when I was sure I was ok having that scene, I found a photograph of a full moon in a daytime sky to put with this post!

There you have it! That was today's fun, and maybe I will actually start reading the book's first chapter when I get this posted.