It’s the holiday season — so Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays, or < celebratory adjective > < your holiday here>! I bring that up because the holidays may or may not have had an impact on my writing. Did it? Did I finish the major Earth and Sirius arcs? How about the spin-down chapters? Let’s take a look at the numbers, and then we’ll talk!
Progress Report 2022 Week 52 By the Numbers
One of the benefits of not being terribly sociable is that I have time for writing over the holidays!
Purely viewed from the perspective of word count, I have to consider last week a success. The holidays gave me extra time to write, and I didn’t want to waste it! That leaves open the question of how far I got. It’s the last week of the year — will I finish Evolution’s Hand Book 4: Blind Exodus by the end of 2022?
Progress Last Week
I had three goals last week, and I’ll address them all at once:
- Finish the Resolution chapters for the Ross 128/Sirius arc
- Finish the Resolution chapters for the Earth arcs
- Begin the spin-down chapters
Here’s my status’s short version: the first draft of Blind Exodus is complete! But, before you celebrate, there’s a catch. And it comes down to a background note I made about the Wormhole Projection System (WORP drive — I just hope I don’t get sued). Here’s the quote about how much distance a ship equipped with the first generation of the WORP drive can travel:
“60 minutes to travel 10 light hours”
That’s during the initial charting run. Once the ship confirms the emergence point is free of gravitational sources, they can setup a station so subsequent trips are faster. After that’s done, my notes say a trip from Ross 248 to Sirius will take:
“A standard trip might take 10 hours”
That’s a distance of just over ten light years.
Before I wrote the first word in Blind Exodus, I laid out these rules and firmly committed them to memory. Well, maybe “firmly” is the wrong word!
These are my own words. I wrote them all by myself. And then I promptly forgot them. In James Butler and Ira Malhotra’s arcs, I wrote that trips from Sirius to Ross 128 (not a typo — it’s separate from Ross 248) occur instantly. Yes, I forgot a fundamental rule of my own world.
It’s not a catastrophe. I caught it before any readers did! Still, I need to pay more attention to my own background material!
Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2022 Week 52
Given the colossal mistake I made with my own physics, I think this goal will make sense:
- Retro-fit the appropriate physics into the Ira Malhotra and James Butler’s chapters. That’ll require a few other minor adjustments as well.
Like I said, I’m just glad I caught that before my readers did.
What Do You Think?
Do you ever get through a book and realize you broke your own rules? Do you have techniques to avoid that kind of thing? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!