things and stuff

[edenfalling]

Things I have done today:

1. Buy groceries.

2. Pot a baby spider plant, which I am going to inflict upon a coworker on Tuesday. (Hey, she specifically asked for it!)

3. Google a lot of penthouse apartment floorplans as part of the revision process for "The Law of Conservation of Mangrit." Attempt to sketch blueprints based on vague descriptions in the fic. Tear hair repeatedly in frustration. Realize yet again that I should never be an architect.

4. Finish reading The Age of Revolution and start reading The Age of Capital.

5. Read the proposed bylaw revisions that are up for approval in tomorrow's church meeting. Suddenly realize that I'm not sure if I still qualify as a voting member. (I didn't pledge last year or this year, on account of financial uncertainty, and I think I missed the congregational meeting last spring.) Shrug and hope for the best.

6. Agree to work more hours at Not the IRS on Monday.

7. Call my parents to catch up. Sympathize with my dad about his encyclopedia editing woes.

8. Walk into town twice, first because I had to return some library books and then later on because I just really wanted Chinese takeout for dinner.

9. Recharge my bus pass.

...

I lead a boring life, and I like it that way. :-)

Comments

[marmota_b]

My brother-in-law is an architect. Now you have me wondering if he could make plans based on fic. Not that that I'm going to inflict that on him, mind you.

[edenfalling]

I think it depends on the fic. Some writers have a very strong sense of place and are good at coherently describing buildings, and/or a fic itself may rely heavily on logistics -- who can overhear what conversations from which areas, which doors provide line-of-sight to what rooms, etc. -- in which case yeah, you could probably make a decent guess at a canon-compliant floorplan. With most stories, though, probably not.

[marmota_b]

Yeah. And it gets more complicated with reader impressions projected on the text, too: and very often, writers actually count on those impressions to fill in the gaps - I know I often do.
I'm the sort of writer who tries to have it all figured out and be consistent, but it does not necessarily make way to my writing in an obvious manner and I don't chart it out... which might sometimes be helpful to do. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out on which side of the river the road from Beaver's Dam through Beruna to Cair Paravel would have gone in each section of the journey, and even after I've figured it out, I still can't remember.
And sometimes you form an idea based on your own experience when reading, and then have trouble getting rid of it, even though it contradicts what's actually in the text.

[edenfalling]

And sometimes you form an idea based on your own experience when reading, and then have trouble getting rid of it, even though it contradicts what's actually in the text.

Oh yes! True life example: despite the incredible textual emphasis in LotR and its related works about Valinor and the ocean being in the WEST, because I am from eastern America rather than from western Europe, I subconsciously and automatically translated "land with an ocean along one edge" into a mental map with the ocean in the EAST. And then I spent several years wondering why nobody ever talked about Mordor's beaches and navy, which obviously it must have since it's described as being in the east and east means ocean, right??? *headdesk*

[marmota_b]

Now that's an extreme example. :D Mine's just River Rush being a lot like the river in a place I've been visiting nearly every summer since childhood... including usually going upstream instead of downstream. This is, of course, exacerbated by the weird logistics of that journey in Prince Caspian, where logically, they should go upstream from the sea, but don't.