It’s been a little while since I started posting Zeki’s Folly, so I thought I’d give an update. I’ve been working on the story I described as a riff on the show Designated Survivor. In short, it started in my head as a fix-fic, prompted by my going “That’s not how things work!” several times per episode. (Don’t let me discourage you: what I watched was still fairly fun. It just wasn’t… accurate.) Before I started writing, I switched it to an original story, as I didn’t really have all that solid of a grasp on the show’s characters. I wrote up a few hundred words of introduction… and then got bogged down in editing Zeki’s.
So how’s it going now? I hear you ask. Well, hypothetical reader, it’s like pulling teeth. One of my key conceits about the story is that it is supposed to be accurate to actual US law. I’m more legally literate than the median American, but I’m also no lawyer. I’m certainly no expert in constitutional law. Consequently, I’m spending as much time researching as I am actually writing. Can a Circuit Court immediately jump to an en banc appeal? What are the details of the military’s Chain of Command? Should I use the normal rules of capitalization, or should I capitalize Important Words like they do in the Military and Government?
I’m about 6k words into the story, and I can see it lasting another 5k more. However, a few hundred of that is literally quoting the Constitution, so who can really say how much farther down this rabbit hole I’ll be going. I’d originally hoped to have this out by Independence Day today, but unless I magically get a time machine, that won’t be happening. Currently, I’m going at about ~250 words per day, which is way lower than my normal. Curiously, it’s also about the number I hear essayists cite for their writing speed. I guess that kind of makes sense though: I am basically writing a dramatized paper on the flaws of our Continuity of Governance schemes.
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