Rest Day (2 of 11)

Well, all beginnings are hard. The re-beginnings are sometimes not so hard, however; though I didn't do any writing today, I did do something that is equally important – I drew a map. Something I had really been struggling with in the previous draft, but today I just sat down with a pad of squared paper and did it in two hours. It isn't publishable quality, obviously – that will come later, almost certainly involving me hiring someone for the job (any suggestions?) but it is sufficient for me to use when writing at least the first book, and probably for the whole series.

I knew what areas had to go on the map – that I needed some mountains, forests, castles, and so on – so the first step was simply listing everything I wanted. I already had a rough idea of what the land would look like, but then when I came to put it on the page...it didn't work. (Which has led to another little problem, in that I was planning to do the map so that it would be 'portrait', and it ended up as 'landscape'...something for me to ponder later on, maybe by adding more stuff to the south.) I was planning to do Greenland, but I ended up with, well...(at this point, I wish I had a working scanner...) Iceland connected to an ice cap at the north, with Crete underneath it. To give you an idea of the shapes.

Once I had the outline, I filled in the gaps – half a dozen towns, a city, tall mountains – the 'Giant's Teeth' – surrounding an inner forest, some hills, a smaller forest...and then I realized I still had some gaps. So...well, usually when I'm doing maps for fantasy settings, it is for D&D campaigns, and it is always best to fill in such gaps. So the 'Doommire' was born, filling a nice piece of the map, even though at the moment I haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to do with it. I'm sure I'll think of something eventually...or ultimately it will just be an interesting feature on the map I never use. And yes, the name is a placeholder at the moment. I like it enough that as a name to drop in, it's fine, but I'd probably want something better if I was actually going to use it seriously...any thoughts?