Today, I gave shape to my capital city with a map of the city and castle. It’s pretty rudimentary, but good enough for my purposes.
I had been facing some resistance over this map drawing phase, since I’ve never done it and often face serious confidence issues whenever I’m taking on a new task. But this morning, before I started, I managed to persuade myself that I wasn’t producing a map that had to be all logical and become something that would go in the book, I was drawing something for my own reference so that I could get the action right as I write.
That reframing seemed to help and I got the city map done relatively quickly.
Now, I only have one more map that I think I need before starting with the writing (though I may have to sketch out some precise scenes later). That is the secondary city where the midpoint occurs. I’ll tackle that on my next fiction day and be ready to move on to the next step!
Rather than looking at the maps or anything else as a slog that I have to get through, I’m trying to look at them as the last hurdles before I can start what I am really excited about- the writing!