Rough map by Karen Funk Blocher
The differences are startling. Mine looks like a child's drawing. Hers looks like a map. Beyond that, Sara's map shows a lot more thought being put into how cities work: who would live where, what businesses would exist, how to deal with shipping and flooding and siege and...well, you get the idea. I can't tell you how pleased I am. Sara asked me a bunch of questions that made me think about details and logistics, and then drew something that answered questions I would never have thought of!
Also, I bought a personal Wiki app called Trunk Notes. The darn thing doesn't stay connected to my computer for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and the iPhone data doesn't talk to the iPad data unless I sync first one and then the other to my computer. You're supposed to be able to sync with Dropbox, but I failed to figure that out. I mean, I'm sure I could conquer it eventually, but it was far from obvious how to do it from the instructions given.
None of the formatting from the Word files I imported were carried over into the Wiki formatting, and the numbered scenes in my outline defaulted back to 1, 2, 3 at every chapter or dating break. I didn't see how to add tags (a place for them, but not an icon for adding them), and the way the links work is weird. At this moment I'm not at all sure I'll keep it. I may take another stab at OneNote or Evernote, or make do with M.S. Word.
Sara's map, though, made my day!
K.
But I'm not quite there yet. There are still a few scenes to be written, a few improvements to be made. For example, in re-reading a Patricia C. Wrede novel last week, I realized that not one character in the Mâvarin books, aside from the people in the Palace, has even one servant. Is that realistic for my society at this stage in its history? It's true that I've more or less consciously created a milieu that was far more egalitarian than most historical, pseudo-historical and fantasy realms. Have I overdone it? Probably. Certainly Rutana, an elderly mage in uncertain health who lives alone in a fair-sized house, needs and deserves a servant to help her out, at least a few days a week. She'll get one. And here's a related point. Can she afford a servant? What does she do for a living? If she's retired, where did she make her money before that? So I've had to figure that out, not just for Rutana but for Fayubi as well. Robert Young's character in Father Knows Best rather famously had no apparent job or source of income. I don't want that sort of stumbling block in the way of my books' verisimilitude.