Posted on

Writer Incognito: Researching on the Road

That’s me, about the walk down the road to Fayette, the historic town site in Upper Michigan, and embark on some research. Fayette is a good six hours from my home in Milwaukee, so I had to wait until we went on vacation near enough to the site before I could steal away for the day and work. I packed a lunch, lathered on the sunblock, loaded up my writing utensils (notebook, pencil, camera) and mapped out my course.

With trees on either side of me and spotty cell service above, I spent the drive thinking through questions that lingered after my last visit too long ago, and I hoped I’d learn new information inspiring enough to push me through the remaining bit of my first draft. While at Fayette, I learned plenty: about the town in the late 19th century, about the depth of my self-doubt, and about researching in broad daylight under the hot sun in the middle of tourists.

Leave your sandwich in the car.

My timing was off a bit, as far as when I arrived in Fayette. It was too early to eat my lunch, but I knew I’d get hungry in the middle of walking around. The site isn’t so huge that I couldn’t hike back to the car and grab my lunch, but I was eager to get outside and move forward and not so eager to turn back in the middle of research. So, I opted to carry my sandwich with me, figuring I’d eat later when I couldn’t stand it any more.

What I couldn’t stand any more was my sandwich overheating and perspiring inside the plastic baggy. Nor could I bear to look at its sad state, wilting around the form of the rock I placed it on in order to snap another photo. Finally, even though I wasn’t starving, I sat down on a bench and gobbled it up, if only to rid myself of the weight and the guilt.

The lesson: eat before you exit the car, hungry or not. Nobody likes a sad sandwich.

Accept that tourists may view you as maybe important but mostly…odd.

I was the only person on site with a notebook that day, and all my scribbling got me some attention. In one building, I feverishly took notes on the iron smelting process, studying the placards with great intent. Someone approached me, then, and asked me a question about the process, because surely I knew. I stumbled through an answer and shrugged a few times. Then, in lieu of admitting outright that I was writing a novel, I blubbered, “It’s all so interesting, isn’t it?” Adding a maniacal laugh at the end. They responded in silence, turned around slowly, and walked away. As any good writer will, I immediately went into doubt mode, worrying that I’d just revealed myself as some sort of fake. That person will never read my book, I thought. Who am I to think I can manage this who novel business anyway? Then, I remembered: I’m not writing a book about the iron smelting process; I’m writing a book about the effects of an industry on the land and the people. And, maybe that person won’t be one of my readers. Perhaps he really did think me off kilter. What writer isn’t off kilter?

The lesson: don’t get too caught up in minute details. And, there’s nothing wrong with odd as long as it translates into a good story.

Pack an extra pencil in your pocket.

I put on some miles that day, and not just because I walked from building to building. I kept my pencil clipped to my notebook, but I still managed to drop my pencil twice. Once I had to high-step through grass and weeds to find it. Lucky for me, my pencil was bright blue and thus easy to spot. But, there’s nothing worse than backtracking when you see the sun moving toward the horizon. Unless you’re still walking around with a soggy sandwich. Yes. That’s worse.

The lesson: don’t trust your notebook to hold tight to your writing utensil.

Take photos of everything.

I must have turned my camera on and off a thousand times, foregoing any artistic eye and snap, snap, snapping away. I didn’t care, though. Some details do matter.

Like the peeling wallpaper in a kitchen, which was only spotted by standing on my tiptoes at the back of a boarded up house, peeking through one window left unblocked. I risked a close encounter with a mean looking spider for this shot. I don’t even know if it’s the original wallpaper, but I couldn’t resist.

My bulletin board soon will be full of photos of random shots, some with me shadowed in the background or mirrored in the glare of the window, record of a good day researching.

The lesson: talk nice to the spiders.

Even though my time in Fayette was short, I thought about the novel for every day after. Being surrounded by the landscape of the area was enough to feed my muse. I took notes during the small-town Fourth of July parade, on beach at Lake Superior, while riding a two-gauge train through the forest on our way to Tahquamenon Falls. I clicked the button on the camera any time we passed an interesting grove of trees or a patch of lumbered land. Now that I’m home, I’ll be pushing through to the end of this draft and using all those photos and notes for a serious rewrite.

Good times.

What do you do when you research on the road? How do you manage your sandwich?

Like what you see? click here to sign up for weekly blog updates.

Posted on

Lost and Found in Writing

LOST

It’s always on the weekend when the panic strikes. A few self-induced deadlines I set in the days before loom over my shoulder, half-done or not done at all. I start eying up the clock, wondering how I can stretch out the day so that I can write something. Anything.

It happened as such last Saturday, but it wasn’t until after 10pm when I finally sat down with an open document. For almost an hour, my fingers clipped across the keyboard. I wrote with one eye open so as not to force it, cranked out “garbage” and then “decent” and – “finally!” – the good stuff. I was going to call it at 11:00. Then, seconds before I saved my work, I blinked. Maybe I shifted my weight.

Whatever, my hand hit a rogue key and the document vanished. All those words, all the good stuff, disappeared somewhere in cyberspace.

When it’s that late at night and an hour’s worth of writing flitters off into the vapors, all you can do is laugh. “Okay,” I said, to my muse or to the ghost who roams our house late at night or to whomever might have been listening. “I get the hint.” Maybe the words read well, but the timing was wrong. Could be, that I was writing too much drama (I’ve been known to be quite dramatic in first drafts). Either way, the message was clear: got to bed, sleep on it.

FOUND

I won’t lie, I half hoped I’d wake up the next morning with full memory of the prose I lost. While that didn’t happen, I did uncover a gold mine of ideas later in the day.

Digging into research for a historical novel I aim to write, I zipped through microfilms of a newspaper dated in the late 19th century. This was my first foray into the research (and my first microfilm experience since, say, 1989), so I read through the sheets aimlessly, not sure of what I needed. A few things jumped out at me, though, and soon enough, I discovered more than just details about a particular time and place.

  • Personals: The personals in 1885 read a lot different than they do now, with news like Edward Gaynor, Esq. is down again with his old dyspepsia. There’s no fear of his passing — he’s too ugly to die. While entertaining, what’s even more great about the personals is that they’re full of names. Great names for characters that are in line with the times. My pencil went crazy making lists.
  • News Summary: This section reads much like an early form of gossip magazines, and hints at domestic life and odd characters. A woman named Hattie Thorton sets fire to a hotel, “so she might have the chance to use the firescape.” And, a doctor, accused of attempting to poison his wife, “skipped out. The evidence was too direct and conclusive.” How’s that for prompting ideas that could add spice to your story?
  • Weather: The microfilms I searched were full of simple charts about temperatures an wind gales and brief accounts of unusual meteorological events during that time. I could probably find information on climate in other resources, but, because weather will likely play an important role in the story I want to write, reading about those events from the perspective of the people who lived through them is even more exciting.

Writing is often a give and take, depending on your perspective. What I’m reminded of, again and again, is that all I have to do is show up. Bad days turn to good days soon enough.

What do you think? Tell me about your week of great finds.

 

 

Posted on

3 Pieces of Writing Advice that I Almost Missed

One of my favorite industry magazines, The Writer, never fails me, though I sometimes fall short of recognizing all that it has to offer. Sure, I dog-ear several articles in each issue, but, more often than not, I breeze through the last few pages, skipping over the Market listings and the Classifieds, barely glancing at the final column, “How I Write.” Sometimes I’m in a hurry to finish the magazine; sometimes I’m being aloof. If it’s at the end, I think, it can’t be that important. Either way, when I blow past that very last page, I risk the chance, as I realized with this month’s issue, of missing out on key advice.

In the March issue of The Writer, “How I Write” features an interview with Jacqueline Winspear, author of the successful series about Detective Maisie Dobbs. I don’t read mystery much, so I almost – almost – closed the cover of the magazine. But, something pulled at me to read her interview, and I’m glad I did. I grabbed on to three key pieces of advice that I desperately needed.

1. On Research

“If you let [research] dictate a story…you might as well be writing nonfiction. . . . If you are completely directed by research, you lost the story’s rhythm. If there’s no rhythm, there’s no dance.”

Every bit of writing, I’m learning, requires research. Even now, I’m working on a short story about a piano tuner. I’ve been bookmarking sites on the internet for the past several days on things like piano terms and anatomy, tidbits of information that are crucial in making the character believeable. But where Winspears words really hit home is in respect to a different project: I have an itch to write a historical fiction. I admit, I’m frightened, of the research involved, that I might not gather enough and get details wrong, that I won’t be able to make the story work. I could walk away from the project, easy (though the idea of it keeps resurfacing and refuses to be ignored). So, it helps to keep in mind that, while research is critical, it doesn’t necessarily drive the story.

2. On Fear

“Don’t make excuses. . . . Don’t be afraid . . . . After all, [what’s] the worst that could happen?”

For me, fear can be infectious and lethal if left unattended for too long (see new project angst above). I have a few mantras that I repeat, under my breath, in moments of heavy self-doubt. One hints at my secret affinity towards a certain four-letter word. The other runs cleaner and is parallel to what Winspear says: what have I got to lose?

3. On the Job that Pays the Bills

“…[D]on’t underestimate the power of your day job; that structure and finite time for writing could be the best motivation you have.”

Boy, isn’t that the truth? The more time I have to kill, the less writing I get accomplished. But give me a crunch time of two hours (or less), and I can whip a whole draft of a story up onto the screen.

How about you? Catch any pearls of wisdom lately?