Greetings! I hope all of you are doing well!
This week was rather interesting for me. While I wrote, plotted, and read, a good bit of this week went toward working on something of a side project. I started to update my map for the world in my current series. I’ve had a few maps over the years that have since become outdated as I learned more about the world over the course of the series. I’ve been meaning to create an updated map for a while. It turns out the mood to start working on that project struck me this past week.
Book 11 is progressing nicely. That said, I did not get as much drafted or plotted as I mentioned wanting to do in last week’s update. I did make a good bit of progress with regard to figuring out upcoming things for the final two books of the series. Additionally, I did at least maintain my streak of at least writing something every day. Most of this week, however, went toward working on the map, and all of the assorted things that go with that.
Reading for this week was mostly finishing Mercedes Lackey’s Phoenix and Ashes, the third book in her The Elemental Masters series. Overall, I liked it. I am intrigued by the magic system in the series. Since I discovered the series while looking for books about elementals and elemental magic, this seems to be a good find. Other than that, I did return to Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer, though I haven’t made much progress with it due to my unplanned side project…
Speaking of the map, I am pleased with how things are going so far. My latest revised map was a pencil sketch from a few years ago. This week, I finally copied it over to a digital format. I spent a lot of the time since then refining the map while also reading about a lot of different topics. Most of the big areas of the map are the same as the previous iteration. I created a rough elevation map as a way of to track where rivers should be flowing and such. I’ve also been tweaking assorted region boundaries with the good ol’ “borders are defined by things like rivers and mountains” thing. The process of creating this map is also leading to some interesting developments. Part of this has influenced certain regions, particularly with regard to travel. Since a couple of the regions haven’t been overly developed in the drafts I have currently done, I’m looking forward to seeing how things go. I suspect I will learn quite a few things that will help me bring the world to life that much more. (To be fair, between working on this map, writing in-world songs for my series during February Album Writing Month, and creating snippets of languages for certain folks, I can definitely see why Tolkien would have been excited about his works.)
The plan for this week will likely involve all of my current projects. I plan to continue working on the draft of Book 11, and I plan to do a bit more plotting for it as well. Reading will likely involve continuing Oathbringer,but something else might catch my eye. Other than that, I will likely continue working on the map, though perhaps at something of a slower pace than I was doing this past week. Depending, I might do a bit of painting, but I might find myself drawn more toward the mapping and floorplanning side of things.
That seems to be everything for this update. Thank for reading!
~ Theresa
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