Writing: 1,219 words
Inventing your own town is much easier than working within the layout of a real town.
For a long time - not quite since the beginning, but for at least a handful of years - I had planned on Michael traveling to Haddonfield in order to execute Operation Persephone. It was really just meant as a little nod to a couple of people I know who live there. And I wanted to mention the statue of the Hadrosaur that stands in downtown. But when I got around to writing his arrival, I quickly got bogged down in the logistics of making Michael's trip factually exact. I was actually worrying about accuracy in a piece of fiction, and my writing was suffering for it.
The problem is that I've got an obsessive-compulsive streak when it comes to writing stories set in real places. If a character of mine is, say, walking down Kings Highway East in Haddonfield, he's going to walk past the Candy Buffet, and Happy Hippo Toys, and Jay West Bridal, and Cold Stone Creamery, and he's going to mention them (as it turns out, there's a Candy Buffet in Hobbes Landing, too). Of course, to get all of the right, I wind up spending half the night on GoogleMaps's streetview, and I distract myself from my writing in the pursuit of geographic verisimilitude.
So I gave up on Haddonfield. Sorry to a certain teacher and lawyer who live there, though I'm paying you tribute in another way. Just keep an eye out for a recognizably-named used bookstore. I transplanted Michael's pursuit of the heartless bastard that Michelle had called Eddie from Haddonfield to the fictionalized borough of Hobbes Landing. And in four-and-a-half hours, I wrote 1,219 words in a section and a half to complete Michael's arrival in town, bringing the manuscript's total wordcount up to 95,133.
In other news: I'm now starting into J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Yes: for the first time. Yes: I know I'm late to this particular party.
For a long time - not quite since the beginning, but for at least a handful of years - I had planned on Michael traveling to Haddonfield in order to execute Operation Persephone. It was really just meant as a little nod to a couple of people I know who live there. And I wanted to mention the statue of the Hadrosaur that stands in downtown. But when I got around to writing his arrival, I quickly got bogged down in the logistics of making Michael's trip factually exact. I was actually worrying about accuracy in a piece of fiction, and my writing was suffering for it.
The problem is that I've got an obsessive-compulsive streak when it comes to writing stories set in real places. If a character of mine is, say, walking down Kings Highway East in Haddonfield, he's going to walk past the Candy Buffet, and Happy Hippo Toys, and Jay West Bridal, and Cold Stone Creamery, and he's going to mention them (as it turns out, there's a Candy Buffet in Hobbes Landing, too). Of course, to get all of the right, I wind up spending half the night on GoogleMaps's streetview, and I distract myself from my writing in the pursuit of geographic verisimilitude.
So I gave up on Haddonfield. Sorry to a certain teacher and lawyer who live there, though I'm paying you tribute in another way. Just keep an eye out for a recognizably-named used bookstore. I transplanted Michael's pursuit of the heartless bastard that Michelle had called Eddie from Haddonfield to the fictionalized borough of Hobbes Landing. And in four-and-a-half hours, I wrote 1,219 words in a section and a half to complete Michael's arrival in town, bringing the manuscript's total wordcount up to 95,133.
In other news: I'm now starting into J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Yes: for the first time. Yes: I know I'm late to this particular party.