Trust in God, but tie your camel

[rolanni]

So the short story's done in first draft, clocking in at 7,300 words.  It still needs a title (hmmmm...Camel?) and a thorough going-over, but for today it, and I, rest.  By which I mean, "signing several hundred blank pages."  And doing the dishes.  Because yesterday was about writing 5,000+ words, and the dishes suffered for it.

In other news, the Deluxe Scrabble edition which is our Yule present to each other arrived on Friday, and has been sitting on the Mencken Table making with the come-hithers.  We have, so far, Been Strong.

Also!  The Christmas catalogs have begun to arrive.  I love Christmas catalogs, they're so full of. . .stuff.  Ridiculous, useful, in some cases sublime stuff.  Things I never knew existed.  Truly, Christmas is a season of joy.

I'm still working my way, page-by-page when time allows, through Maphead, which is continuing to amuse.  I've just finished a chapter dealing with (among other things, like the National Geographic Geography Bee, and people who turn maps upside down so they're pointing in the direction of travel) people who make up their own geographies.

The 1942 smash hit, Islandia, was the lifework of Austin Wright, who began imagining his world when he was a boy, and continued to work on building its culture, language, geography, and customs throughout his life, until his untimely demise.  (Read all about it here).  The papers from which Mr. Wright's widow and daughter extracted the novel ran to manymany hundreds of pages.

Also discussed, of course, is Tolkien, and Brandon Sanderson, who is quoted as saying something like it's the maps that allow people to immerse themselves in fantasy novels.  A sentiment with which -- speaking as someone who skips over, and is frequently annoyed by, the maps -- I am not in agreement.  Having a map of Mirkwood Forest doesn't make me "believe in" Mirkwood Forest; I believe in Mirkwood Forest because it's real.  Sheesh.

That aside, and speaking as someone who, at an early age, started in to build what became the Liaden Universe®, I'm amused by the author's assumption that people who tend toward that particular imaginative exercise are inevitably mapheads and/or that maps will definitely be part of the process of defining the world.

I am. . .whatever the opposite of a maphead is.  Unless I've walked an area, a map of it makes no sense to me.  If I have walked an area, then I can "see" the houses and the landmarks on its map. I have a map of Old Orchard Beach hanging on my wall.  It serves the same function, for me, as knots on a memory string, to remind me of locations I already intimately know.

It amazes me that Steve (who is a maphead) can look at a map of foreign climes and immediately know how to get from Point A to Point B.  How's he do that?

I guess I'm saying that there won't be any maps of the Liaden Universe® coming anytime soon.

But -- here's a question for all you voracious readers out there -- do maps lend weight or reality to your fiction-reading experience?  What (else) makes a world "real" to you?

Discuss.

. . .and I'm off to do the dishes.

Comments

[amm-me.livejournal.com]

I love maps, and almost always know (and NEED to know) where the compass directions are around me. On the other hand, at the scale possible in a book where a single page is allotted to the map, I find them less than useful. And many times, even though a map is offered, geography doesn't seem to play enough part in the story to have required it. Also, if you are going to give geographical info in the text, with or without a map, you need to be particularly careful to proofread all instance of left, right, east, west, etc. I will be thrown right out of the story if a directional word goes counter to the worldmap I have imagined.

I feel no need for a map of Liad. However, a map of the port road on Surebleak would be kinda nice. Particularly since the descent of Korval upon the world, I have been somewhat puzzled by the geographical relationship of Melina Sherton, Jelaza Kazone, Yulie Shaper, the rest of the city, etc.

The maps I love are the fairly large-scale maps of places like southern England, where by poring over the tiniest place-names you discover, for instance, Tolpuddle, Puddletown, Piddletrenthide, and Piddlehinton. Maps that only show the main places, with great blanks in between, are not near as much fun.