Mathverse Musings
I finished Philosopher's Stone today. If I can get through Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban this week before I leave and finish Goblet of Fire during my stay at Clemson (a little over a hundred pages a week--no problem), I'll have just Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince to reread before Deathly Hallows comes out. I can read those two in a week. That's the worst-case scenario, though. I hope to at least start Goblet before I leave; after all, I'll have a long drive there that will be a ride since I will not be the one driving. That reminds me; I should actually look up directions sometime this week.
I wound up drawing some of my characters for my mathverse this afternoon, too. They're actually looking pretty good. I just need to figure out where the smilies should go on them. I'm still figuring out exactly how I'm going to write this in November. If I have a function f(x), should I leave it as such when the characters are going to pronounce it "f of x", or should I write it "f of x" since that's how the characters are going to read it, and it'll increase word count? Same thing with, say, e^x. Should I write it like that, or like ex (which I probably won't do in the first draft since it takes too long anyway) or "e to the x"? These are valid things to think about.
I guess it depends on the context. In most of the mathematical fiction I've read, they've written in in the mathematical way, which makes the most sense. But I'm writing about integrals and derivatives, and since I'm not writing my NaNo novel in LaTeX, it would make sense to write those, at least, in words. I'm not whipping out OpenOffice Math just for those. It'll slow down my writing.
Ooh! I should write my entire novel in LaTeX language! That would be interesting. It would probably increase the word count by a bit, too. Of course, LaTeX (code in general, really) likes to strip out apostrophes (we were talking about this on grammarpolice when Facebook omitted apostrophes during March Madness) when you cut and paste stuff in, and that'll be really annoying to fix.
But NaNo's awhile away. Just watch. In October, I probably won't have too many more ideas. At least I have characters in mind this time!
I wound up drawing some of my characters for my mathverse this afternoon, too. They're actually looking pretty good. I just need to figure out where the smilies should go on them. I'm still figuring out exactly how I'm going to write this in November. If I have a function f(x), should I leave it as such when the characters are going to pronounce it "f of x", or should I write it "f of x" since that's how the characters are going to read it, and it'll increase word count? Same thing with, say, e^x. Should I write it like that, or like ex (which I probably won't do in the first draft since it takes too long anyway) or "e to the x"? These are valid things to think about.
I guess it depends on the context. In most of the mathematical fiction I've read, they've written in in the mathematical way, which makes the most sense. But I'm writing about integrals and derivatives, and since I'm not writing my NaNo novel in LaTeX, it would make sense to write those, at least, in words. I'm not whipping out OpenOffice Math just for those. It'll slow down my writing.
Ooh! I should write my entire novel in LaTeX language! That would be interesting. It would probably increase the word count by a bit, too. Of course, LaTeX (code in general, really) likes to strip out apostrophes (we were talking about this on grammarpolice when Facebook omitted apostrophes during March Madness) when you cut and paste stuff in, and that'll be really annoying to fix.
But NaNo's awhile away. Just watch. In October, I probably won't have too many more ideas. At least I have characters in mind this time!