Presumably all writers of fiction start with research for their chosen themes, subjects, periods, and locations. I know I always do. For my latest WIP I decided to set the story within the period around the first part of my own life. This was, after all, a time I knew well. Or so I thought.
On 24^th April, I posted a piece here to say I’d finished the first draft at 103,223 words and would leave it to mature over a short period before I began the rewrite. That short period was supposed to end shortly after my 75^th birthday at the beginning of May. It’s now July, so what happened?
I’d added a few paragraphs of potential research, ideas, and thoughts for the story during the writing of the draft, entering this information at the top of the single document that became the first draft. After I removed those insertions from the top of the text, the actual story was reduced to 89,893 words, still a decent length for a novel. The additional information will add detail, context, emotion, and description to the basic story already told. But I want, more than anything else, authenticity.
In the period of reflection, I spent a few days re-organising my study, moving books around, altering the way stuff was organised on various shelves, and getting shot of various bits and pieces of clutter. During that process, I discovered, under the desk, something I’d forgotten even existed. From my teens I had, with a few exceptions, kept annual diaries and/or journals. Once I began to read the draft of the WIP, I quickly realised much of it was written in language and idiom reflecting the modern world. The solution seemed obvious: refer to the diaries and journals for clues about attitudes, language, events, and opinions of the period. It shouldn’t take long to mine the useful information from the various volumes, all handwritten of course since the computer hadn’t been invented in any recognisable form and had only come into my personal life toward the very end of the period I was depicting.
Hah! Not long, eh? It turned out I had various notes, diary entries, and a few page-a-day journals from 1964, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, and 84. I needed to extract the relevant information from these. All in my handwriting, which has been described by the learned as ‘about as legible as that of the average doctor or genius’. Now, I’m no doctor… Anyway, to make the job of using the relevant information a little easier, it made sense to transpose those passages into type on the good old PC. I’m no copy typist. I use two fingers, and a thumb for the spacebar. I can manage around 35/40 words a minute when creating, but that speed drops to a more pedestrian 20/25 words per minute when I’m copying from another document.
To cut a lengthening story down to size, I’ve ended up with 56,649 words of research to mine as I go through the first edit of the story. So, I don’t think the book will be appearing this year! Having reached that age when dexterity, concentration, and the ability to focus my eyes on the screen have all diminished to no more than four hours in a day, I suspect the process will take me a little while.
So, those of you following my progress in the hope of reading another work of brilliance from my imagination (who says arrogance applies only to youth?) will be kept waiting a little longer than usual. But I’ll keep you posted about progress here on the website, even if it’s only to tease you.