So. The Terry Pratchett thing is, of course, my big news that many people will care about, but the news a few people will care about – the progress on my novel project – is pretty good too.
This week’s been a comparatively short one, in that it only started on Wednesday, but so far I’ve got several thousand words of outlines, setting notes, etcetera. Oh, and an anecdote about setting building.
It took me one and a half hours to write,
‘Nikolai Drenali was born in 382.’
At first things went off to a cracking start, then I reached the word ‘in’ and discovered that, you know, some work needs to be done. Because I hadn’t yet established a system of time keeping, an epoch for the number of years, or even whether or not the years are numbered at all. So I had to spend roughly an hour and a half figuring out what kind of calendar system fits the world and culture involved, and just how long it’s been since the stereotypical fantasy apocalypse happened.
Then I ran into an issue, because I’m using a 243 day year.
The issue is this: At 27 years old, with a 243 day year, you are barely legal. And at 18, you are twelve years old by a regular calendar. How to solve such an issue? Simple. A liturgical calendar. Of 360 days. Because religion trumps the observable universe, and that way people measure birthdays, and the effective date, out of synch with the seasonal year. (Which is fine, because there are, shall we say, complications in dealing with seasonal years when your planet was blown to smithereens.)
Anyway. Just an amusing example of how working on material that will likely never end up in your book will make you consider things you usually wouldn’t. (And yes, I could have randomly selected a number for the year Drenali was born in. But that, that would be cheating.)
