It is the last day of the autumn school holidays here. During the holidays, there is very little time for writing between visits to the skate park, farm outings and my second job as Negotiator for the Two Small Countries that live in this house. In fact, I think the net total word count in my manuscript has gone down over the last fortnight due to the swathes of rubbish I have edited out.
We also have a new family member who is a great distraction and a lot of work. But also pretty cute (luckily!)
When I tell people I am writing a book, the first question I get is what am I writing. My current work in progress is a novel of historical fiction set three hundred years ago in France. It is the first serious thing I have written. Along with that comes learning how to move the action along, how to stay motivated (ie not play on the internet) and how to edit. It is challenging in a few other ways too. Basically, I have jumped in the pool and am hoping I can stay afloat.
The novel is set in France so it can make researching difficult. I have a good working knowledge of English history but not necessarily French history. Most of the books, articles and primary sources for the period are in French. I can read the written language but it does make skim reading difficult and the whole process is a lot slower than usual. The French Revolution, with its associated reams of information, happened about seventy years after the period I am writing about. There might be one useful book in the library next to fifteen tomes about the revolution. I am really enjoying learning about French history and society aside from “let them eat cake” and guillotines though. I will start posting interesting facts from my research on this blog.
My novel is set in a time when the last major bubonic plague to hit Europe swept through the south of France. I love apocalypse stories as much as the next person (maybe a lot more) but I cannot get past the fact that the bubonic plague is gross. I am finding it difficult to read about the symptoms, let alone describe them in gruesome (flesh-blackening, pus-disgorging) detail. A lot of the remedies employed at the time did not help much and probably even hastened death, like bloodletting.
On a side-note, watching The Walking Dead helps a lot with envisioning the bodies (got to be counted under research, right?).
However, I think a novel is most poignant if it focuses on the characters, their interactions and their reactions to trauma. So I should be able to keep the gruesome to a minimum.
It can be a solitary existence writing. It is different from other jobs, in that there is no ‘team’ to share the latest gossip or meme with, no ‘water cooler chat’, no meetings nor even any feedback on work done until the manuscript is finished. It is normally just me versus the computer. So feel free to comment or ask me any questions.