So yeah, today was, interesting. It’s not often you wake up to a news story that fundamentally changes a key plot point in one of your novels. I won’t go into the details too much as I’ve linked the Imgur post I did on it below for context, but suffice to say, Betelgeuse is 530 light-years away, not 642.
The funny thing is, the rewrite I did, which included a tweak to future-proof the story if not the numbers against further changes, I think comes out as a significant improvement on what I’d already written. More, the burst of energy I found to get this rewrite done at such short notice not only made for an earlier target, but a 1,300 word day and a deep feeling of fulfilment once it was done. I took to my white board, listed the problems the new discovery created, and in about 5 minutes I had a solution.
Moral of the story is twofold: if you base a story on science, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for new developments in the field; buy a white board. Trust me on that last one, nothing liberates your mind like having a huge drywipe blank canvass and being able to sketch out any problem on it. And, to make it a nice trio, if not quite a moral, this reminded me just how much a jolt to your system – or star-system – can tap into willpower and enthusiasm reserves. Honestly, this was the best thing that’s happened to me in months.
samshuttleworth.com 