Confession of a Terrible Blogger

Once upon a time, I was a good blogger. I posted three or four times a week and was pretty good at keeping up with reading/liking/commenting on your blogs. I’m not saying I was perfect, but I feel alright about the blogger I used to be.

Alas, that blogger was slayed sometime after October/November. My posts have been sporadic (or less so), my reading of your blogs pitiful and embarrassingly non-existent. It’s not because your blogs aren’t awesome! They are. Truly. Many of you are the type of bloggers I aspire to be.

I just don’t have the motivation/concentration/time to sit down and just enjoy WordPress anymore, whether it be for myself or for you guys.

And I feel really guilty about it. About once a week I’ll think to myself, “Libby, you should go write a blog post. And read some blogs. And leave super nice comments on ALL of them. And discover new blogs to follow. And keep following them. You really should, Libby.”

But do I ever listen to the little voice in my head?

No.

Sometimes I get as far as turning on my computer somewhere beneath all the junk on my desk and opening up Google Chrome. I’ll click open YouTube to listen to some music as I prepare myself for my amazing return to blog stardom (return? or ascend? I wouldn’t say I was ever a blogstar ) and, well, you know the rest. I’ll hear an awesome song, and decide to post it to Facebook. And then I spend the next hour clicking through pictures of Anne Boleyn and Lord of the Rings (though not usually in the same photo) and before I know it it’s time to get something done that I should have done three hours ago, or three days ago.

You all know it, and I know a lot of you have gone through similar stages in your blogging careers. Some of you may have given up on your blogging dreams and are no longer with us. Some of you pulled your act together and kept going for the rest of us to enjoy.

I can’t stomach either of those right now.

I know I can’t dedicate myself to re-becoming the blogger I was last year, I don’t have the time, but I don’t want to tell you all I’ve decided to abandon Blogland for greater adventures.

….So, this is my lame compromise.

I’m announcing an official leave of absence. During this absence, I plan on devoting as much time as I can (and time is a slippery little bugger) to my current WIP. (Yes! I have a WIP! Hallelujah!)

Now, during this time, I’m sure I’ll get a stellar idea for a blog post, but worry not! The urge will be satisfied. I will write the blog post and save it to my hard drive. And once my leave of absence is over, I should (hopefully) have enough accumulated enough blog posts to make a bit of a comeback as my former blogger self.

The lovely blogger I used to be got awards like this from other lovely bloggers like Diane, Darlene, Dreampunk Geek, and Writing Underdog. Thanks guys!

I don’t know how long this leave of absence will be. I’m going to say something like…until I get 30 000 words done on my WIP. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but my writing stints are short and sweet and the IP part of my WIP is very IP. Who knows how long that will take?

I’m really going to try to get back on track with reading your blogs, however. It’s been too long, and it will be longer until I decide to make my insanely successful comeback in a couple months. I wouldn’t want you to forget about me, and I certainly want to keep myself up to date on what’s happening in your sections of Blogland.

I feel like a politician with all my promises.

Sigh.

Farewell until next time, my bloggy friends!

Hugs!

~Libby

 

 

BUT WAIT.

THERE’S A POST SCRIPT.

WHOAA.Click for source. 

PS: I do have a kind-of-not-really-legitimately acceptable excuse for my recent weeks of non-blogging. I’m actually still blogging. Just not here, and not as me. I mentioned back in November I had a new idea for a YA novel, and you might even remember her name (though I went back later and changed it to try to deceive you). The character in this idea was a seventeen-year-old blogger/eco-hippie by the name of Storm Rose Bennett-Clark, and you might happen to follow her blog, which launched back in March. During the winter months, I tried putting her story into a novel, and it just wasn’t working — so I decided, somewhat impulsively — to create a blog for her, and tell her story that way.

I’m sure some of you pieced that together already but…Storm isn’t real, and neither are her brother Mica or her friend Hanna. They’re characters I created, characters who may or may not end up in a book one day. They’re not involved in my current WIP, but anything is possible. Pedro the Gnome, however, is real. He sits on my bookshelf, hating the permanent smile etched on his face when he just wants to cry. All four of these characters have Twitter accounts, and you can watch them interact with each other and interact with them yourself.

Storm Bennett-Clark: @StormRoseBlog

Mica Bennett-Clark: @MicaIsaMineral

Hanna Withrow: @HannaTheTerribl (her Twitter account is run by Zozie! Thank for being such an awesome Hanna-impersonator!)

Pedro the Gnome: @GnomeThePedro

That is my confession, my dark secret. But, if you enjoy my writing (which I hope you do) and enjoy Storm, Mica, Hanna, and Pedro, then you can get the best of both worlds by reading her blog, leaving comments, and Tweeting them. I think Storm is going to start blogging more about her personal life in the next couple weeks, and you get to hear all about Jonas Blythe and learn more about Mlle Rousseau!

And if Storm leaves a comment or likes your blog or even Tweets you, you should feel pretty honoured to have a fictional character knocking at your virtual door! Can you imagine if JK Rowling got Harry Potter a Twitter account and blog?

Spring! …Spring?

SPRING IS COMING.

Or at least, it was. Today’s ongoing, albeit light, snowfall kind of ruined the point of this post, but whatever.

The last few weeks have been delightfully spring-ish — the melting snow, the scent of last year’s grass, the muddy mess that destroys any shoes that aren’t rubber boots.

It’s made me very anxious.

This time last year I was in the midst of a writing frenzy, attempting to finish a novel by the beginning of May and that I had started in February(ish). I was writing all the time, everywhere. In the woods, in my room, in the car, before breakfast, during supper, until the wee hours of the morning. This time last year I was writing between 3000 and 6000 words a day, seven days a week. I ate, drank, thought, slept, breathed writing.

And, as you all pretty well know by now, I haven’t really done a whole lot since then. I told myself I deserved a break, but I’ve come to the conclusion I exhausted all my drive to write. Aside from a few brainstorms, a dozen or so poems, and the odd essay or two, I haven’t committed myself to any heavy writing in almost a year.

However, these last weeks, with their wet-ground scent and snow-melt dripping sounds, something has been triggered. Muscle memory? My brain and fingers remember these sounds and tastes and smells…and something is stirring. My body has come to associate the mucky month of March with insane amounts of heavy writing. I went for a walk the other day and realized after about ten minutes that I was thinking of my fantasy novel.

What does this mean?

Nothing, at the moment, other than the fact that I’m distracted, especially when I’m outside.

There’s just too much going on right now, unfortunately, for me to act upon this bizarre reaction my body is having to the weather. Hopefully I can bottle it up and save it for later. Does it work that way? Well, no, but if I tried to simulate spring by splattering mud all over my shoes and melting ice cubes above my head when June arrives…

Silly, Libby.

I will try to blog more often, though! I’ve missed you all!

Aaand, here a few blogs I think ya’ll should check out if you haven’t already:

The Storm Project

Janice In Nunavut

I hear you.

Those Perfect Little Sentences

You know those perfect little sentences that pop out of your pen seemingly of their own accord? The sentences that are pasted on the inside of a book jacket, quoted by readers after the book has been put back on the shelf, and printed lovingly on T-shirts by your devoted team of blood relations.

I love them. The sentences. I love my team of blood relations, too, but that’s besides the point.

I don’t know where they come from, or what environment is needed to produce them, but once they’re sitting in front of me I can’t help but grin. I might write it again three or four times, tweaking a word here or there, or say it out loud, just to get the taste of it right.

Now that I have this little golden nugget to work off of, I can branch off into other, longer, more elicit phrases. Suddenly I have a paragraph. Then a page. And if I sat there long enough I might have a chapter.

I need to sit still longer.

Golden little sentences….

NaWrSoUtDiThaAnYoWriBeMo is still underway, and while I haven’t written in bulk chunks I have got a perfect little sentence to keep my going, main character outlines, a pretty general-yet-still-soft overall plot, and even a few tentative titles (Broken Rainbows.  Haven’t decided yet.).

I’m really enjoying this jaunt I’ve set off on. Instead of having a solid, obvious story line (save the kingdom, get the guy, solve a murder), I’m taking smaller threads and incorporating them into one. When one thread patters out, another slides in. I like it. It’s a theme rather than a plot, and it’s entirely different to what I’ve always done. The character, for now, holds my interest, and I’m learning from her.

What happens on November 30, when the month is up, I have no idea. Tonie Marron might sit in my notebook forever. She might blossom into a full-length novel. At this point it doesn’t matter. I’m trying something new, and it’s the first time in a long time that it feels like I’m using fresh words.

Do perfect little sentences pop out of your pen/keyboard? Do you build around them? How’s NaNoWriMo going?

Let them grumble!

Introducing NaWriSoUtDiThaAnYoWriBeMo!

Day Four of NaNoWriMo is either just beginning, underway, or ending wherever you’re reading this. Twenty-six more to go.

For those of you participating in National Novel Writing Month, I wish you the best of luck. I admire your dedication and perseverance and creative talent under time parameters. You are all my writing heroes.

Unlike writers/bloggers such as Dreampunk Geek and Writing Underdog, I am not partaking in this 50 000 word fest of words, plot, and stress. There is just no way. I think it’s a great program for writers, and a great way to actually get a story from your head into paper (for those of us walking around with unused worlds in our heads). However, this is simply just not my can of beans.

Somewhat coincidentally a new novel idea sort of fell out of the sky on October 30th while watching the Scotiabank Giller Prize on CBC. I thought about doing NaNoWriMo with it, but decided not to.

Her name is Alton (Tonie) Marron, and she’s nothing like I’ve ever written before.

As a result of this new person in my life, and as a parallel to NaNoWriMo, I’ve come up with a proposal. I’m calling it National Write

Image Source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/100808185/always-be-different-coco-chanel-quote

Something Utterly Different Than Anything You’ve Written Before Month. Let’s call it NaWriSoUtDiThaAnYoWriBeMo. I’m sorry. No one said it couldn’t be unpronounceable.

Guidelines for NaWriSoUtDiThaAnYoWriBeMo:

As the name suggests, your piece must be utterly different than anything you’ve written before.

This could and should take the form of differences in:

1. Character
   -Gender
   -Race
   -Sexual Orientation
   -Social Class
   -Cultures/Subcultures
   -Characteristics/Temperament
   -Likes and dislikes
   -Intelligence
   -Morals
2. Structure
   -Genre
   -POV
   -Continuity (write the thing backwards or not in chronological order)
   -Format (poetry, chapters, by the phases of the moon in a year, diary entries, diagrams, songs, rhymes, etc…)
   -Invent nonsense words (recommended reading: Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, Frindle by Andrew Clements)
3. World/Society
   -Different planet/dimension (we’re not in Kansas anymore, or maybe we are)
   -Social Classes (are peasants more important than nobles?)
   -Protagonist experience in situations your previous protagonists haven’t had (love, crime, family, sex, health, drugs, etc…)
   -Government system (olgiarchy, monarchy, democracy, lottery?)
   -Home life
4. Process
   -If you normally do plot outlines, don’t do it
   -If you don’t normally do plot outlines, do it
   -Write it backwards, in random chunks
   -Write it forwards, in one fluid chunk
   -Do a chapter in one paragraph
   -Do a chapter in multiple paragraphs
   -Try leaving out the intake of coffee (but only if you feel it’s safe)
   -Take up drinking coffee (but only if you feel it’s safe)
   -Write with a different tool (pen instead of computer, or Open Office instead of Microsoft Word)
   -Co-write with a friend (or enemy, but that’s not recommended)
   -Author something on your own
   -Write with a group of people, or alone
   -Eat while writing
   -Fast while writing
   -Listen to music or different kinds of music
   -Or not
   -Time yourself
   -Don’t time yourself
   -Don’t keep track of the word count
   -Keep track of the word count

Other guidelines to consider:

• Everything written must be different than any previous pieces. For me the genre, world, and personal life of my protagonist is utterly new.
• Length doesn’t matter. It could be 500 words. It could be 100 000.
• Be scared. It’s no fun if you’re not.
• There are no limits. Want trees to be blue? Go for it. In fact, it’s encouraged, just so long as you haven’t done it before.
• Don’t keep track of your progress. If you must, record your word or page count at the end of every week or with the phases of the quarter moon.
• It’s supposed to be difficult.
• After the month is over you can do whatever you want. I don’t care. If you didn’t finish and want to, by all means do so. If you hated it and want to throw it away, by all means do that, too.
• If you decide that at page 82, when your protagonist is about to chase after her cocaine-addicted boyfriend, the story is over, then it’s over. We are not conventional. We don’t need to have by-the-rulebook beginnings, middles, and ends. We just write. And this time we’re trying to write something we’ve never written before.
• Get your friends or blog/Twitter/FB followers in on the party. Have ridiculous get-togethers where you write the most incredible pieces of literary garbage that sparkle in the sunlight. Just so long as you haven’t done anything like it before. Post excerpts on your blog (and then maybe kindly link them to the guidelines here. )

Good luck!

Excuse the poor banner. NaWriSoUtDiThaYoWriBeMo doesn’t have an artist committee yet.

To my dearest prince…

In a world where everything can be done with the click of a button, prepackaged, and automatically corrected, you are the string that keeps me from floating away.

You remind me that there is more meaning to life than the quantity of one’s Twitter followers.

You give me hope, and even a little bit of faith, in humanity, though not enough for me to abandon you and live fully in the real world.

You’re there for me at the turn of every page. You alone understand me in utter completion. Your unquestioning trust gratifies me.

When I’m scared, you reaffirm your role in my life and give me the courage to continue your story.

One word at a time.

We spent rainy days together, sharing our souls and teardrops and laughing words.

We share vanilla ice cream.

Your hugs, even phantom, are the best ones.

The noise that escapes your lips, it embodies gladness and mischief, and evokes gladness and mischief in me.

Arguing in the rain, the smell of autumn and frustration all around, because you, as always, are playing hero with your sword, wanting to run to battle and die for the sake of glory, without a second thought for how that would leave me.

But you’re so good at arguing. With your hands, your eyes, your pleas. I can’t stop you, I can’t control you. It’s all I can do to keep you alive, despite what a good ending your death would bring. You have your sword, I have my pen. Together we can save you.

Your thoughts are my thoughts, your feelings my feeling, your life my life.

I know more about you than you do. Likewise, you know more about me than I do. Unlike me, however, you keep your wise observations to yourself, while I bare your entire being for all this shallow world to see.

You, my friend, play an infinite number of roles in my life.

Kindred spirit, sister, brother, parent, lover, teacher, student, enemy, comrade.

Wrapped in dried ferns and wool blankets and oneness, there is no place I would rather be.

Without you, I’d be incomplete, missing something beautiful and cherished.

Real or not, your value to me is ridiculously high. Half the roles you are to me I’ve never experienced. Nearly all the roles I am to you are unknown things, things I’ve only read about in fairy tales, with pumpkin carriages and enchanted apples and fiercest dragons.

Be you dragon-slayer or gentle listener, friend in need or a barrel of laughs, you bind me to the world.

In the world, there are few things I know besides books and words and people who, like you, exist only in my mind or ink or memory.

Yet with your life coursing through my veins, into my hand and out of this pen, there is one thing that rings clear and loud, the song of hammer against anvil, whisper of secrets, rush of hands in hair:

True love, it does exist, and I’m sharing it with you.

 

Love,

An extraordinarily lucky writer.

Found: Four Sisters, Unidentified

Among a stack of ancient family photos, these four sisters were found. No one knows who they are. My mother, hobbyist genealogist, suspects that they could be members of the Pitcher family who traveled from England to Halifax in the 1890/1910 range. For now they remain unidentified.

They have lives buried, somewhere, that someone still remembers, but until then they are nameless, less even than characters in a book.

It is a sadness.

This photograph is creatively intriguing. All four girls, dressed in white with bows in their hair, are wearing lockets of some kind, perhaps identical ones. The girl on the far left looks unhappy (impatient with the slow process of early photography?) and the eldest girl appears to have taken on a caring and even maternal role for her sisters. The two eldest seem to be close in age — were they best of friends, like Jane and Elizabeth Bennett? Did they quarrel? Was the third sister envious at being excluded from the elders’ games and annoyed by the youngest? What sort of parents did they have, what sort of lives did they lead? What occasion does this photograph represent?

To me the placement of the girls, and the void separating the two eldest, could represent the absence of another sibling or parent. It looks like there should be a fifth person. Who? A brother? Another sister? Mother?  

I might have to write about them. Nothing too long. Just a little novella. Between 30 000 and 50 000 words, tops. We’ll see…

Have you ever written a story based on a photograph? Why did it inspire you? Do you have any mystery relatives in old family photo albums?

If you know who these girls are, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.

“My heart shall never be put under their microscope.”

“Harry,” he [Basil Hallward] said, “Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the lovliness and subtleties of certain colours. That is all.”

“Then why won’t you exhibit his portrait?” asked Lord Henry.

“Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes.

“My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry — too much of myself!”

“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”

“I hate them for it,” cried Hallward. “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing into of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

~ Chapter One, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 1890

Basil Hallward, the tragic artist in Oscar Wilde’s single and scandalous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, brings up an excellent point. Everyone always says that for an artist (painter, poet, singer) to achieve the highest form of beauty and authenticity, they must pour their heart and soul into their craft. And it makes sense. After all, can a songwriter be believable in crooning the lyrics to a melody of an abusive relationship just as well as someone who had experienced it? To give your art that something extra, that je ne sais quoi, you have to sacrifice something very private and very personal.

But how personal?

Basil’s dilemma is that he’s worried Dorian Gray and the public will see in his portrait the entirely inappropriate infatuation he has with the cherubic boy. As he says, his “heart shall never be put under their microscope.” The picture simply means too much to him, and can’t bear the thought of anyone beholding it — for to do so would place him naked under scrutiny, and the magical quality that makes made him produce beautiful pieces of art would be taken for nothing but the public’s idea of muse, inspiration, and beauty. And to Basil, Dorian’s picture means so much more than that.

After picking up my poetry again, I can say I’ve shared in Basil’s worry. Have I put too much of myself into this poem? Does it say too much about me? Will it make me vulnerable if I let others read it? 

Lord Henry Wotton points out, in persuasion for Basil to exhibit this picture, that: “Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication.”

 Touché, Harry, touché. People love reading about other people’s innermost thoughts, worries, and problems, especially the romantic poetry format. They might be so absorbed in relation to their own issues that they only appreciate what the poet has written, not what’s in the poet’s heart.

Or maybe there’s a difference between letting strangers read your work, as opposed to people you know, love, and care about. A stranger has no idea who you are, what your life might be like, and can appreciate the poetry for what it is — an emotional release, an experiment with words and feelings. Someone who knows you might immediately begin to show concern at your mental well being. Maybe you actually have a personal issue. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you think you do. How can you explain that?

So I suppose it depends on how confident you are in yourself, and if you’re looking to get your poems published or not. Do you want people to see/hear your words, even if it means baring yourself to them? Would you rather keep the private poems hidden in a shoebox, only to see the world again on nostalgic, rainy days? Or do you keep your deepest emotions out of your work, to avoid the terrifying task of sharing at all costs? If you chose this route, aren’t you A) missing out on releasing those pent-up emotions? and B) being disloyal to yourself and your potential readers by producing poems that don’t mean anything to you?

Qu’est-ce que tu pense? What do you think?

Rhyme or Reason: Going Home

Dear Elizabeth*,

Too long have I envied how well you write. You don’t even have to think about it. You just pick up a pen and disappear into your own little word.

These days I know you have turned to writing novels and set aside your poetry, and in honour of your success with your novel (whether it gets published or not) I want you to have this book and to continue writing your poetry! After all, multitasking for you isn’t too hard!

Keep on writing, <3

Velvet

This was written in a notebook given to me by one of my dearest friends (whose real name is not Velvet) on the day I received my first rejection. All I can say is that this countered out the rejection (plus some!) and I haven’t thanked her enough.

It’s true that in recent years I’ve neglected my poetry and short story-writing. There was a time when I wrote little poems constantly, on a daily basis, on Tim Hortons wrappers and my arms and pocket notebooks. It began with lyrical prose, then gravitated to more literal rhymes, then free verse. It’s funny, because I can look back at poems and tell you what year it was written, because of the style it was written in.

The past two years or so, poetry has been set aside: the only time I wrote it was for contests, for which I am now ashamed and confused.

I know a lot of people don’t like to read poetry — honestly, it’s not my favourite either. But writing poetry is cleansing, like taking deep breaths. Unlike writing larger fictional pieces, it doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to tell a story, though it can, and it can be interpreted a thousand and more different ways, a myriad of colours and emotions and meanings swirling behind words that appear identical on the outside.

Looking back on what I’ve just typed, I can see parallels between writing/reading/interpreting poetry and people. We (for the most part) all have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a heart, a stomach, ten toes, cheekbones, four limbs. But, peeling past skin and muscle and sinew, each of us is an entirely different entity; what is inside of us is generally interpreted from the outside, but it can be misleading, judged poorly, or prejudiced. To every single other human being on this earth we are perceived differently, in good light or bad.

I know you already know this, but seeing it written out again before might remind you of why poetry can be breathtakingly beautiful.

In the last week or so my own perspective and priorities have altered and changed. I’ve placed distance between myself and my second draft and wandered lamely across the Internet (which is one of the things I do best) without much of a purpose at all. Not blogging as often, not reading other blogs as often, not even reading books as often.

Then I remembered the notebook Velvet gave me, and the letter inside it, and it has inspired me to revisit my love of poetry and other beautiful nonsense words strung together with no rhyme or reason. Oh, I’m sure I’ll still think about When the River Freezes (the tentative new title, changed from Arden: the Girl from the Mountains), and occasionally jot down a couple paragraphs or add to the synopsis, but I’m taking the next month (or more, depending on how it goes) to bring out my inner Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost.

I’m not expecting results to compare with the likes of those giants, but the point of this exercise is to relax, to become re-acquainted with words I might have lost contact with (silt! I completely forgot about the word silt!), and regain a flow to my prose that I feel I’ve lost since working on When the River Freezes. Heighten descriptions, whimsical content, and rekindle the love of words that made me start writing in the first place. I wrote poetry before I ever tried my hand at long fiction, and I think I’ve been away from home for too long.

It’s time to go home.

~~~

I haven’t decided who I would rather be here: Elizabeth or Shakespeare.
Portrait: “Shakespeare Reading to Queen Elizabeth” by John James Chalon (1778-1854)

Some of my poems might appear here, or they might not. You shall read it when I post it!

*Velvet and I have been friends since before I began going by Libby, and often still calls me by my full name, in case you were wondering. I’d like to thank Velvet for her support, inspiration and lovely letter — it means the world to me.

One Stone is Easier than a Thousand

Walking aimlessly along the road, your eyes roam across the gravel, instinctively searching for an anomaly. Ah! There! A stone, about the size of a small nectarine, green with grey and yellow highlights. You pick it up, study its contrasting veins, and slip it into your pocket with satisfaction. You love stones!

Can you image lugging one of these around? Source: Wikipedia.

Excited, you eagerly scour the ground at your feet for more, and the longer you look, the more you find: a purple pebble, a silver rock, a few rose quartz fragments, a shiny black one, and one shaped like a wine bottle. Before you know it, your pockets are crammed full and your pants are slowly sliding over your hips, too heavy to continue their job properly. You have no more room, so you fill your boots, your hat, and make a hammock out of the front of your sweater, spilling a stone every time you bend over to retrieve another one. Simply, you can carry no more, and you’re losing the ones you’ve already tucked into your rubbers and Toronto Maple Leafs cap.

I look at researching for writing in this light. There is no doubt that research is a priority during the brainstorm-to-final-draft process, especially in regards to historical fiction or fiction that has elements similar to our own past. I’ve heard of authors spending years on their research before they actually put pen to paper. Years. It’s nice to have a supply of background knowledge or informational tidbits on hand to insert, as well as making yourself sound knowledgable and dedicated to your topic. You don’t want to write a book about Shakespeare’s personal life and talk about him in the summer of 1617 — because he was dead by that time. You don’t want to write about a falconer who keeps her raptors in cages — because she would keep them in buildings called ”mews,” which are akin to a large dog kennel.

But years? If I researched for years on every aspect of my story, I’d eventually have no story left. It would slip away and one day I would look up from my research and wonder why I was still in the library, full of facts about outhouses and the flammable qualities of alcohol, but with nothing to apply it to. I suppose your researching methods would differ depending on if you were writing fiction about a historical figure or event (Charlie Chaplin, the Battle of Bosworth), but where your tale takes place in a world similar to earth, you’re likely to take a different approach.

Take me, for example. Walking along the road (or storyline), I’ll occasionally look down at the ground and look for a stone (fact) that suits my needs. Then I’ll look back up and continue on until I need another stone. This way my pockets aren’t dragging behind me and I’m learning something new.

A lot of the time information I insert into my writing is accidentally

A dragon playing flapdragon. Source: Wikipedia.

discovered (like I tripped in a pothole and did a faceplant, eating gravel). Just the other day, a Facebook page mentioned something called flap-dragon. Curious about anything with the word dragon in it, I searched it up and ta-da! Flap-dragon, also known as snapdragon, is a game dating from the 16th century and primarily played during the winter: the game entailed burning brandy in a bowl with raisins. Players then had to snatch the hot raisins from the bowl and eat them without being burnt. Shakespeare mentioned the game in 1594′s Love’s Labour’s Lost: “…thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty interesting concept. It’s post-medieval/early modern and would fit wonderfully in most fantasy worlds, especially among young men or at a family gathering at Winter Solstice.

So I pocket that lovely tidbit and store it away for a later reference.

Talking to people is just as valuable as spending hours sifting through dry, complexly worded texts. My uncle described to me how to skin and prepare a porcupine and how it sits in your stomach (heavy; you could never eat an entire porcupine on your own). Pocket that. You never know when your character might kill a porcupine.

I might be writing, or thinking about writing (which is just as productive, you know), and suddenly something will raise its attention to me, a question that needs to be remedied via Google. Just the other day I was struck with the notion that an outhouse will not last forever. Obviously I knew they weren’t indestructible, but I had no idea how long one outhouse would last. I asked around and visited the suspiciously helpful Wikipedia, and it turns out that after ”many years” the solid wastes will form a pile and fill the pit; a new pit is dug close by and the dirt from the new pit is used to cover the old one. Helpful, isn’t it? Basically, my characters won’t have to re-dig an outhouse pit within the period of the novel.

Then there are the things I go looking for. One of my main characters is a falconer — that is, she uses birds of prey to hunt. I did my entire first draft without much more than a quick Google search for falcon breeds; the second time around I hit the local library and falconry association websites. It was only until I cracked open the books that I realized how complicated the sport is! Female raptors are favoured, because they’re approx. a 1/3 of the size larger than a male, and only the peregrine falcon performs the near-200 mph stoop (dive) to kill its prey. Goshawks are more ideal for hunting in the woods because their shorter tails provide easier, sharper, and quicker flying around tree trunks. Falcons and hawks are like horses in that they might have an off day, act ornery, and do nothing despite treats and urging from the owner. Falcon droppings are called “mute.”

And those are only coming from the top of my head. I have one borrowed book, a collection of stories from falconers, and a book on strange methods of hunting, in which falconry takes up a chapter. I’ve watched videos on YouTube of falcons flying, hunting, and resting, and plan on emailing a falconer later on in the year when things are a little less hectic. If you’re a falconer, please leave a comment below and correct any mistakes!

But because I’m not collecting information at an alarming rate doesn’t mean I have to wait for more facts to continue with my writing. I have some basic knowledge of my main character’s trade, and with it I can write about her, her life, and her routine without being an expert in falconry. Later, when I’ve researched more (in a calm, patient, relaxed manner) I can go back and add details or fix my mistakes.

I would rather spend more time editing than researching and letting my story slip away from me. I’ll answer any questions I might come across — how to make paint? — and pick up any facts that I think can be incorporated, but I’d rather have a little load and more time to write than a heavy load and no time to write.

Happy writing/researching! Why not go play a game of flapdragon with the boys this weekend?

being tongue-tied…

mind overflowing, a reservoir swelling

spilling

no control, no holding back — let it come

words jumbled

ideas rampant

dreams floating, popping, expanding

all too fast for phrases or sentences

too wild for the constraints of the paragraph

flinging like the dancing peaks of a heart monitor

painting with the grace and joy and confusion of a child’s first masterpiece

illegible, unintelligible, unreadable, incomprehensible

but never meaningless

ink leaking, spreading, growing

a mess, blue and black and red running, mixing,

morphing into an impossibly breath-stealing creature

of its own making

glowing, changing, beauty in itself,

a mountain landscape at dusk, the silhouetted forest at dawn

the sigh of briny marshlands

a blink of a shooting star

fleeting, memorable, impacting, true

immortal

you could have never set out to make this

being tongue-tied, it seems

is the secret to accidental genius.