Love in Dark Settings

An update for those of you who don't read my regular Daily Life entries: I've settled that the Calvert Cliffs cove near Cove Point in Calvert County is a suitable home for my protagonist. I've written the Hoopers Island watermen chapter. I've rewritten the Solomons Island chapter. I still have to write the lighthouse chapter and the Calvert Cliffs chapters.

But meanwhile (or rather, before I wrote the Hoopers Island chapter), I went off to Dorchester County again, this time with spiralred.

( Chesapeake Marshlands National Wildlife Refuge Complex (at Bishops Head Point) )
( Hoopers Island )

Thanks to Spiralred and her willingness to tramp through uncharted marshland, this trip gave me the material I needed to write the Hoopers Island watermen chapter - not to mention a new scene featuring a marshland pond - though I'm still struggling with nature terminology. I'd really like to get someone from Hoopers Island to look over the manuscript - though how the heck I'd find that someone, I don't know. Maybe I can stand in the island store again, holding my manuscript and looking like a pathetic tourist till someone takes pity on me.

"When I was writing Trumpets in the West in the middle of India, with scarcely any reference-books, I discovered just in time that the stage-coaches in 1686 carried no outside passengers. It meant rewriting a complete chapter. Probably no child would ever have noticed the mistake, and perhaps no History teacher would have minded. . . . Similarly a whole chapter of Thunder of Valmy had to be rewritten when I discovered by chance that a certain morning at Versailles in May, 1789, had been grey and drizzly, not sunny as I had first pictured it. What does it matter, a pedantic detail like that? Just as much, or as little, as the workmanship which old-time sculptors and carvers put into figures so far from the ground that no human eye would ever appreciate it."

--Geoffrey Trease: Tales Out of School.

( Background to my entries )
( Mentoring: An exchange between my apprentice and me )
( Writing: #1 reason to love the U.S. government (Prison City research) )
( Writing: #1 sign that it's time to stop gathering research material )
( Writing and Simplicity: Starting into my writing season )
( Simplicity: Purging my hard drive )
( Writing: Slugging away at the Prison City lighthouse research )
( The play 'Fishing Gone' (Prison City Research) )
( Writing: Rugby, watermen's dialect, and steamboats (Prison City research) )
( Writing: Playing around with EPUB e-books )
( Writing: Preparing my domain for next year; plus, novel-reading related to Prison City )
( Writing: Speaking of demoralizing . . . )
( Writing: 1910s watermen's dialect (Prison City research) )
( Simplicity: Freeing up space on my computer )
( Simplicity: Freeing up space on my computer, Part 2 )
( Writing: Turning over the slate )
( Writing: My Muse moveth )

"The trouble is. . . that too many historical writers have been more in love with history than with writing. They are so fascinated by their discoveries (how well I know the danger!) that they are tempted to put them all in. So, as their knowledge increases, the story gets bogged down in detail. They describe and explain where they should be content to indicate. There is a good deal to be said for writing historical fiction in the depths of the Indian jungle. . . . But the more courageous way is to face your reference-books squarely across the table, and convinced yourself that you, not they, are going to write the story."

--Geoffrey Trease: Tales Out of School.

( Background to my entries )
( Home and Writing: Wellness clinic; plus, steaming ahead with Prison City )
( Writing: Slow progress with Prison City )
( Writing: Inspiration and perspiration, or How I write stories )
( REVIEW: Recommendation of Evangeline Walton's 'The Cross and the Sword' )
( Writing: Status report on how my stories are going )
( Writing: My Muse continues to stutter out scenes )
( Simplicity: Gearing up to go online )