ksmith | Painting self into corners 101

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever heard came from, iirc, Lois Bujold, during either some long-forgotten panel or in a post on her list. The gist of it is, don't box yourself in. Don't mention specific dates, days of the week, times of day. Avoid as much as possible any sort of timing straitjacket, because sure as hell it will come back to haunt you. Maybe not right away. Maybe it will wait until Book 3 or 4, at which point you will realize that you mistimed some important past event that your character would not have forgotten, that you did yourself good and hard. If you happen to forget, never fear, for if the books do well, some sharp-eyed reader with a loooong memory will remind you. Or maybe, if you're lucky, no one will figure it out but you, and it will gnaw at you like a little gnawing thing, falling out of your mouth every time someone compliments the detail in your books. "Yeah, but in Book 3 on page 247, I did the stupidest thing--"

I recall this advice now, because I have spent the last hour using a nifty little program called QuickPhaseLite to chart moon phases around the Winter Solstice from the year 1836 to the present. Why, you ask? Well, she said, because occurrences of Waxing Gibbousness and their frequency have suddenly become important. And I could handwave this, except that I have a starting date that can be checked. And I could fudge the starting date, except if I do that, then the story loses that cool sense of being related to something that actually happened. So even though this program is likely reliable, I will probably find some way to check...then check again. And maybe again. Damn it.

Don't mind me. I'll be over here. Gibbering.