My entire career was in technical drawing. Maps, site layouts, and so on. First with ink on mylar, then using various CAD packages, culminating with AutoCAD.

Outside of work, I've run role-playing games, which are also heavy on the creation of maps, buildings and, shall we say, underground complexes (the main setting of my book is one such, um, underground complex).

So why is this exercise so bloody hard? I don't mean the main "setting" exercise - I'm pretty good at descriptions, again, from running RPGs and writing other stories. I mean the bonus one, where you draw the thing. (GIS isn't all that useful for this.)

I should be excellent at this, and yet, it's rubbish.

Bleh. At least I put in the effort. And it might even turn out to be useful. But I'm not proud of it.