Writing Progress

[davidgillon]

I haven't written every day over the last week, there've been a couple of days when I was too tired to really think straight, but even those had notes or the odd sentence scribbled down. The Disruptive Technologies manuscript now sits at 16,000 words, up 5000 words from six days ago. I'm having to do a lot of thinking about locations and background and general plot stuff, because that's something that I really need to get right now, otherwise it'll mean a lot of rework later. I'm slightly concerned that the last two chapters have come in at about 1200 words each,  that's definitely on the low side for a 100k target with around a 20 chapter target - realistically the chapter target is likely to vary a little, there's an amorphous lump of investigation in the middle that I'll need to resolve as I get closer to it, but not so much as to drop the words per chapter target down to under 2k.

A couple of things that have taken ridiculous amounts of time to research: working out which agency leads anti-terrorism investigations in the US (answer FBI, despite DHS, and a whole bunch of other agencies, having anti-terrorism responsibilities), and where Seattle PD's Criminal Investigation Bureau works out of (still not answered that one, may have to read a Seattle cop's memoirs to work it out - SPD, your website is worse than it was three years ago!).

Other things googled: Whatcom county's SWAT team, Sedro-Woolley's police station. Ford Explorer, Chevrolet Suburban. Almost every precinct house in Seattle. Houseboat prices in Seattle (my protagonist has to live somewhere), Cantonese restaurants in Seattle, courses at the Army War College, and I still have to do the vast majority of the research on drones I need, and I'll need that soon.  Some stuff I'm getting by on because I already know the details - for instance a (brief!) discussion on riskflotte strategy and how it relates to asymmetric warfare that I wrote earlier - but writing in the real world setting, at least as I'm doing it, seems to have a significantly increased research load.

Comments

[tylik]

...if you want to talk about the different houseboat type situations in Seattle, I'd be happy to? There's a *lot* of variety, from the pretty cheap ass to the really plush.

[davidgillon]

Thanks! I'd completely forgotten, but you had one at one time, didn't you? I use Seattle as a setting because of that ultimately never-happened secondment to Boeing and therefore knowing more about it than anywhere else in the States, but knowing several people from there or who've lived there certainly helps.

One advantage of looking at realtor's listings for research is you can get a pretty good look around the places they're offering. I was startled by the price of some of them ($1.8m!!), but others seemed substantially more reasonable. Having done yachting, I've a pretty good idea of what living aboard a boat is like.

With Seattle style houseboats, am I correct in assuming pretty much everything is built on top of a raft, rather than the living area being more boat-like and substantially below the waterline? And how are they temperature wise? I know UK canal barge style houseboats have a reputation for being difficult to keep warm in the winter because the water just sucks the heat out of them.

I guess the other obvious question is what's not obvious, what would the land-dwelling majority be surprised by?

Ultimately I'm looking for somewhere realistic, and interestingly different, for my protagonist and their partner: one's a not-Boeing engineer, the other's a very junior prosecuting attorney, the current assumption is somewhere on Lake Union, though realistically I can make anywhere work.

[tylik]

There are several styles - I mean, people live on actual boats, of course, some more comfortable for it than others. (There are boats designed to be lived in that are still boats, and then there are people living in more random boats.)

Then there are barges, which is what I lived on. (I didn't find it that bad but a. I don't get cold that easily and b. Seattle doesn't get that cold, mostly. I did mostly sleep with socks and a hat in winter, but then, I like sleeping in colder rooms, and running the heater at night seemed wasteful.)

Then there are the built on a dock style ones, though some still have underwater portions.

Keep in mind that not all are sold through real estate agents - craig's list has a lot of the less expensive options.

Think flocks of kayakers singing Christmas carols...

[davidgillon]

Then there are the built on a dock style ones

That's cheating!

flocks of kayakers singing Christmas carols...

That's a delightful image, I have it loosely pencilled in as around Thanksgiving, but could change it.