Nitpicky Jerkface

This week's edits were pretty easy and mostly along the lines of adjusting concepts that I didn't like.  Most of them reoccurred again and again throughout the book, so it took some time, but once I had the concepts solidified in my head, the changes weren't hard.  They felt more like corrections.  Like if I decided to change a parade route.  Which streets would need to close would change, along with what businesses the parade passed and who came out to see it and when and where it ended.  Maybe since it ends in a new place, there would be room for a little fair with BBQ and face painting and music and a bounce house. 

I spent the first day doing even easier edits.  I did Find/Replace edits, where I changed names and standardized all the various spellings of those names.  What am I going to call this spell that gets used repeatedly?  What about this other spell, because in the first draft everything had names like "Magic Missile."  Turns out even though this is a Find/Replace edit, and therefore the easiest thing ever, I got snagged on what I was going to change these things to.

One of the big things I got snagged on is a street name where most of the story takes place.  The story is set in alternate-universe Austin on Pecan Street.  Now, there is not a Pecan Street in Austin, as is common knowledge to most Austinites because there used to be a Pecan Street that is now 6th Street, and 6th St is not only a popular street, but also likes to boast about how back in the day it was called Pecan Street. 

So.  If the story is set on Pecan Street, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That street doesn't exist!" and slap my book on the table.  If the story is set on a street that does exist, like Congress Ave, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That store's not on Congress!" and light my book on fire.

I've been grappling with this very minor detail for days, trying to convince myself that it I'm the only person who would ever be upset about this, or trying to come up with a third option that makes the problem disappear.  I've been struggling with it because I'm the kind of reader who gets hung up on things like this, especially when they're set in cities I love.  Like how I will never let go of the fact that in Divergent, the Erudite's evil headquarters is really a Panera Bread.  Because I am an asshole.

Then I heard this interesting interview with Chris Claremont (who wrote the X-Men for years and years and years), where he talked about setting fantastical stories in the real world and how the familiar elements are not just little treats, but make the characters more real and relatable.  It makes it so you can see yourself in them, and it makes them so they aren't unreachable superheroes, but actual people.

That's the coolness of watching a show that's filmed on location.  "Elementary," for example, last year had a wonderful scene where Holmes and Watson and the police captain are walking down the street, and I'm looking at a Manhattan street that I know, and I remember that snowstorm because I'd been out in it three weeks earlier...That's the ideal thing.  It's that real touchstones make the fiction, the fantasy, that much more embraceable.  And for those who live in the neighborhood that much more enjoyable.

So that's helping to sooth my internal battle.