Do the Math

My dad was a math professor. Okay, he was the math professor. He was amazing! He could make algebra look like addition. He could make calculus comprehendible. He won Teacher of the Year at his school quite often. And one day, my mom brought home a sign from work that read, "Do the Math." Oh, my dad loved it!

You'd think the math gene would be passed down. At the very least, I might enjoy math. Must have gone to my brothers, 'cause I surely didn't get it. I can do math...when forced. I love patterns in numbers and the logic behind them, but overall, math is just not my thing.

And yet, the last week, I've been doing some pretty major calculations.

My series, The Crown's Call, spans nearly 600 years through 15 books. I had a general idea of the timeline, but I never sat down to figure it all out. So I decided to do a mass merge of my storylines into one document and delineate which events fall where.

Pretty intense, let me tell you.

I found some big discrepancies and worked through those. I even fine-tuned quite a bit. Down to 4 or 5 decimal points! After I got that all arranged, I blew it back up to reflect years only, unless the story takes place within a single year.

I revised my first novel according to the new timeline, and I feel good about it. Now, I'm setting off into #2 to do the same thing.  Polish, polish, polish.

So...if you are thinking about becoming a writer to avoid computations, think again! As a friend of mine said, "You can never escape math."

Much to my chagrin...