Researching as Recreation

While I sit here, still without a personal laptop computer (mine died a quick, undignified death back in September), I have found it hard to write.

Ironic, I know.

Please note, I have not said I have not written – I have written a great deal.  I would venture to say that over 100,000 words of fiction (not including columns or book reviews or anything of the sort) have been typed since moving to Maryland this past July.  They just haven’t all been publishable, as a few are works in progress and at least one is merely a derivative work of fiction, not original at all.

But one of the completed works is a short historical story with approximately 10,000 words. The hard thing for me was that it was not set in my “usual” eras – any of them.  Ancient Ireland?  I’ve got that.  Elizabethan England?  I speak Elizabethan at need. First century Rome?  I have a rough idea of Caesar Augustus’ reign and the social structures.  But America during the Second World War?

That took some research.

I Used to Read the Dictionary

When I was very young (read: preschool-age), my mother would often use big words with me in regular conversation, or I would be reading something and not understand a word.  My mother’s directive was always, “Look it up!”

This was daunting, but a fun challenge for me.  Our dictionary was six inches thick (I measured it later) and published in 1932. The supply of fabulous words was mindboggling to someone who had not yet met the Oxford English Dictionary.  I used this resource all the way into grad school, carting it with me through several relocations and educational institutions.  I loved the cover off of it.

In later years, my younger brother and I would peruse our set of the Encyclopedia Americana. Just for fun.  Summer afternoons spent sprawled on the broad hallway in our home, each of us with a volume of the set, working at it from opposite ends of the alphabet – good times.  Seriously.

So from my earliest years, research as recreation was a pattern.  My mother used to think I’d make a marvelous lawyer.

 “I’m Not a Lawyer, But I…”

The adage is solid: Write what you know.  There is no better reality to bring into a story than a reality you have a personal grasp of in your life’s experiences.  I am the mother of a high school senior and an autistic fourth-grader. I could write reams (and have come close!) about parenting a high-functioning autistic boy.

Thing is, even though I read my great-aunt’s memoirs, I don’t have her life experiences. I cannot fully possess the gut-tensions of living through the Great Depression. I never worked at Douglas Aircraft and am unfamiliar with how it felt to hold a “bucker bar” for a riveter on a jet aircraft.  Still, research is my friend.

As a gift for my aunt, as and possible submission material to a magazine after the new year, I have recently completed a story set in Long Beach, California during World War II.  The initial pre-reader notes have told me that my writing style in this story is “effective and uncomplicated” and “reminiscent of the time.”

For someone who is accustomed to writing ninth-century Vikings, this is really a big deal. Seriously.

The Internet is the best toy in the known universe.  Better than my first six-inch dictionary, better than a complete set of encyclopedias, and easier to use than a library database.  For the record, I am not a fan of Wikipedia, except as an idea-point if I’m looking for information that I don’t have any idea how to find.  Usually, if I’m looking something up, I hit Google.