The Election and Other Surreal Experiences...

So montrealais and I went down to the freshly-opened election office, and signed up -- him as candidate, me as official agent. Turns out we're the first to sign up, so until Liza, Thierry, and Whatizname from the Conservatives get off their butts, this is a one-person race :)

Everyone was caught off their feet this election. The election office is still being put together, and they're having computer problems.

Spent the day making preparations for draught two of my novel. I wrote up life histories and vital statistics for my five major characters and two dozen minor ones. Next I work on maps of important locations. This process not only helps consistency, but forces me to consider aspects of a location I wouldn't normally think about.

After that, I write up "the rules" -- because there's so many fantasy elements in the novel, and fantasy-novels without a set of rules because very quickly dangerously inconsistent.

Tolkien had every detail of his fantasy world worked out. Rowling, for all her notebooks, is sometimes inconsistent in how magic works, and unfortunately it shows. The real hack fantasy writers change premises every chapter.

You'd think fantasy would be the most freeform of genres, but actually building a "fantasy physics" requires a lot more organization than a novel where you can take such things for granted.

( According to this meme, I've been naughty this year :) )