Research and the info-dump

Research is something all writers have to do, but the genre in which they write certainly plays a role. I write epic fantasy. My late-teenaged self (the girl who wrote the first chapter of my novel) thought that meant I had very little research to do. I could just make it all up. Right?

WRONG.

As I began to write—seriously write—I realized how important it was to be authentic. So I Googled medieval farming techniques to help me set a scene that had very little to do with farming. I read Wikipedia articles on horse terminology before my protagonist mounted her first steed. I watched YouTube fencing tutorials before the first swordfight. I even trolled medical sites for herbal remedies as I made the decision not to simply imagine up an herb every time a character in the book got sick or hurt (spoiler alert: this happens a lot).

The Internet wasn’t my only source, either. I devoured and highlighted the crap out of the books by Frances and Joseph Gies, Life in a Medieval City and Life in a Medieval Castle. I also referenced Weapons & Fighting Techniques of the Medieval Warrior: 1000-1500 AD by Martin J. Dougherty.

But with research comes a perilous danger: the dreaded info-dump. Once I knew all about oxen, mouldboard plows, and planting seasons for every vegetable you could possibly dream up, I wrote a terrible chapter that included multiple pages of tedious description of how the villagers were spending their days in the fields. It was boring. It was unnecessary to the plot. It didn’t carry the story forward at all.

Of course, I axed almost everything, and ended up leaving in just enough to make the setting breathe and have color. I owe my writing group for helping me do that.

Do I regret learning so much if I could only use a tenth of my newfound knowledge in my novel? Not at all. The research I did helped me write a convincing, colorful couple of sentences that (hopefully) make the novel richer.

I suspect, like everything related to the writing process, research techniques vary by the author. I’m certainly not saying my method was the best or only way to go about it. But it worked for me. This time, anyway.

My writing space

My wedding dress was the first one I pulled off the rack. Yes, I tried on several and went to multiple stores. But I came back to the dress that stole my breath… the first one.

My house was the same way. We sifted through hundreds online and narrowed it down twenty or so. The first one we toured, we walked in and clutched each other with wide eyes. It was perfect. And then the realtor opened a door to what I assumed would be a walk-in cabinet off the kitchen. Instead, it was a rec room filled with ugly sofas and a television. But my husband pointed at the outside wall. A FIREPLACE. The realtor left us alone in that room and my husband grabbed my hand. “You could write in here,” he said. There wasn’t even a question that the room would be mine if the house became ours.

We visited numerous houses for sale following that one, but we kept driving by the first one we had seen. And we eventually beat off the contract it was under and bought it for ourselves.

Since then, I have painted the room walls (three are yellow and one is blue), replaced the carpet with hardwood flooring, and added my own furnishings. My friends say it looks like a psychiatrist’s office with the chaise lounge and the huge desk. I tend to agree.

My writing space is fantastic all year round, but my favorite time to write is on a cold winter evening. The fire is crackling merrily. I am wrapped in a blanket, pecking away at a scene while my dog cozies down in my lap. Bagpipes play softly in the background. I sip hot mulled wine. Comforting smells waft from the adjacent kitchen. And my characters truly come alive in my mind.

My favorite reading memory

I grew up on a farm. Well, sort of. It was sixty acres of pasture and scrubby juniper forest. My mom kept a massive garden and we ate fresh and home-canned veggies all year. We had five to six indoor dogs, fifteen cats, a bird, a frog, a couple sheep, and six horses.

My horse was Phyllis, a gray dappled appaloosa mare. She’s still around and approximately thirty years old. She’s a crotchety old lady now, but when I was in elementary school, boy, did she and I have some good times. We used to ride those sixty acres and canter across sun-drenched fields. I gave her apples and carrots and brush-downs; she gave me nuzzles so powerful I was lifted off my feet.

My favorite reading memory has to do with Phyllis. I used to brush her down, give her some treats, and take her into the backyard where the grass was greener. I’d climb up bareback with a book in hand and she would meander slowly across the yard, grazing peacefully. I would lay down with my bare feet dangling beside her powerful neck and my head resting on her rump. In that way, I would read for hours and hours, listening to her pulling the grass, the swish of her tail, and the occasional puff or snort.

I was a lucky little kid.

My favorite book

My favorite book of all time is The Giver by Lois Lowry. You can go read a thousand reviews to get a synopsis of the plot. I’m not going to provide that here.

Why is The Giver my favorite book? I read it when I was still in elementary school. This book ROCKED MY WORLD. It helped me appreciate—really appreciate—life and living. It helped me realize that there was a bigger world than met my narrow view. I truly understood at a tender age how pain, relationships, families, laughter, communication, love, tears, and life are all precious treasures to be cherished and fought for. I apprehended that history and world events were about real people suffering or exulting.

I have 6 nieces and nephews, and my Christmas tradition for years has been to give them books. I was so excited when I finally gave my oldest niece and nephew each a copy of The Giver. If the book spoke to them as powerfully as it did to me, I was the most awesome aunt on the planet for sharing such a glorious piece of literature with them. I can’t wait to share it with the others.

My favorite quotation

“The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
—Mark Twain

I love this line from Mark Twain. In October of 2008 I visited his home near Hartford, Connecticut, where he wrote some of his most famous work including the adventures of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I was duly impressed. At the nearby museum honoring Mr. Clemens, I learned he was fastidious about the quotations he spouted. He scratched out dozens of drafts with the wording changed slightly in just a sentence or two before he settled on the right phraseology.

I love this about Mark Twain. I wonder how many drafts the above quote went through before he landed on perfection.

Being a good writer is knowing how to excise the waste and strike lightning into the hearts of readers with a turn of phrase that is just right. I strive to reach that pinnacle of writing and frequently fail. But when it happens, it fills me up and my readers notice.

The new direction for this blog

The fiction portion of this blog has run its course. From now on my posts will be writing-related. Thank you for reading and commenting on my work.

Abandonment

Something has changed. I wasn’t told of the change, so I learned of it piecemeal. Bit by bit, the new way of things has become increasingly clear. I’m not sure when it happened, exactly. Perhaps I am at fault, but I have searched my memory and don’t recall any offending incident.

I walk along the streambed and watch the tiny fiddler crabs burrow in the brackish mud. The Spanish moss drapes me, caresses my shoulders, shuts me out from the world. I leave no footprints in the grass. My white jacket flutters in the hot summer wind.

This place is beautiful, but I am so alone. My loneliness is a gulf that stretches to the horizon and back. My people, my friends, they have left me here to burrow in the mud. Even the fiddler crabs skitter away from me when I approach them.

When I reach out to my people, I am spurned. I can see them across the flowing waters; my people are out there, laughing and playing and living. Without me. I need to climb this tree and put them out of my mind, for I am out of theirs.

I lean against the tree, the ache in my chest too great to move further.

Rage

Your altered state of contentment is my destruction. Push the button. Push all the buttons. Covet your vision of perfection. I stand with fists clenched and teeth grinding, waiting for you to rocket into the stratosphere. But you don’t. You keep talking. My ears are bleeding, my brain liquefying and pouring from my eyes as you talk. My tears fall on my hot cheeks and I wipe them away angrily. My fury is a coiled snake in my chest. My rage boils my blood; the froth in my veins moves to my heart and fills it with bad air. My feet lift off the ground and I float away, carried by the bubbles. I am left with an empty husk of a soul, shredded and burned. I will do my best never to see you again.

Rain dance

You were gone, long gone, and I could no longer smell your scent as I walked through the empty house. I couldn’t bring myself to unpack the boxes, and they lurked like a forest of overgrown drab Legos.

The phone rang occasionally. I didn’t even realize I had a phone connected until the first time the shrill sound reverberated through the house. I didn’t know where the phone lived under the detritus of newspaper, food cartons, and tissues.

When the knocking started, I ignored that, too. The newspapers stopped arriving and the phone and electricity stopped working. I paced in the darkness, avoiding the shattered mirrors on the walls. How they ever got hung I couldn’t remember.

One day it began to rain inside. The thunder rolled and rolled and rolled like a train rumbling by and the leak sprang in the roof. I watched the raindrops fall on the blue floor and ached to be anywhere else. Ached tiredly, without energy behind it, not enough to stand outside and bathe in the rain. I stood under the trickle from the ceiling and felt the cool water drip from the tip of my nose.

I stood there for a long time, letting the rain seep into my filthy shirt, before I felt the call.

I went to the kitchen and unpacked a single bowl. It had been your bowl. I placed it on the floor under the leak and listened with satisfaction to the plink-plink-plink of the raindrops in the bowl. My hands moved without my volition, and I began to unpack. I could do this.

Despite the rain, there came a knock at the door. I stumbled across the messy floor and unlocked the door.

Anxiety

I sit at my computer, my fingers hovering over the keyboard expectantly. I have opened a new window but I don’t recall where I was going to go. Someone walks by. My heart seizes in my chest as if I have done something wrong. The footsteps recede, and a massive adrenaline dump makes me woozy. I can barely see straight.

I worry about the last thing that came out of my mouth, twenty minutes ago. Worry that it may have been taken the wrong way. Worry that I gave something away I shouldn’t have. Worry I seemed stupid when I said it.

I open the new window on my computer again and freeze. What was it I wanted to do? I check the usual sites. Nothing has changed in the two minutes since I last checked.

My breathing is shallow. My heart, stopped only moments ago, now races to make up for lost beats. I feel a slow thud forming behind my left eye. I clench my fist around my pen. My knuckles don’t turn white; they are blood-red. I dig the pen into the flesh of my wrist until there is a large stain of blue ink there.

It will be hours until this goes away. Maybe until I wake up tomorrow. Worse, it could be days. This anxiety is going to kill me.

Alone

I match the gait of the person ahead of me. Step left, shuffle, step right, pause. My gaze is glued to the sticky concrete sidewalk. The flashing lights do not draw my eyes. A roar of conversation fills my ears, wrapping me in an anonymous cocoon. People yell across the crowd at each other, elbow each other, laugh and even sing bawdy songs. No one speaks to me. Though I don’t look up, I’m sure no one glances my way.

I pause as the Converse sneakers in front of me pause. I hold out my ID and allow my hand to get stamped without glancing up. I wait until a large group squeezes through the narrow black door, jostling each other and fighting for prominence. When the doorway clears, I enter the room.

A blast of loud music punches my chest, empties my lungs of air. I take a deep breath; I taste the sickly tang of smoke and sweat and alcohol. I make my way to the edge of the crowd and hover in a bubble of space that no one is willing to pop. I wrap my arms close to my chest and plunge into the crowd. I slide against sweaty arms long ponytails. I am invisible, short, unobtrusive. I make my way through the crowd between elbows and knees. I reach the center of the mob and pause. There is so little space here that I am being touched by four people around me. The music blares and the people around me scream to be heard. Some hold hands or touch each other lightly on the shoulder to be noticed.

I do none of these things.

I am utterly alone.

Leaving the larkspur

“I don’t know, Sissy,” said Starla. She brushed her blue hair from her eyes. “What if we get caught?”

Sissy fluttered her translucent wings impatiently. “Who cares?” she said. “We’ve never been out of the faery patch.”

Starla took flight and hovered uncertainly over the deep purple petals of her mother’s house in a tall, proud larkspur. It was one of a million in the hillside patch, but it was her favorite. She had hatched just a week and a half ago in this very larkspur.

“You know the larkspur doesn’t bloom forever, right?” Sissy said. “All the faeries will have to find new houses when the flowers turn brown. So we’d just be getting a head start.”

“Oh, all right,” Starla said.

The two tiny faeries took off together. Their wings made a faint buzzing sound, softer than a hummingbird. They passed ladybugs headed out to market and honey bees with pollen-speckled faces. They laughed as they spun higher and higher on a gentle updraft. Soon the vast larkspur forest was spread out below them like a green sky filled with deep purple stars.

Sissy took Starla’s hand. “Are you ready?” she cried over the rushing wind.

“Ready!”

They snatched at a passing dogwood petal and clung to it, screaming with glee. “Where will we land?” Starla yelled.

“Who knows? It could be anywhere!” Sissy replied.

Hummingbird, part three

My tears dried, salty riverbeds traced on my cheeks. I listened for the fall of footsteps, but only the calls of a thousand birds reached my ears. I stood and moved toward the sound. I stepped softly, hoping no one could hear me over the cacophony of the birds. At the end of the hall, I tried a massive door. It was locked. I knelt and whispered to the lock, and it slid out of place. I opened the door, pulling with both arms against its weight.

Inside, the moonlight poured though the leaded glass windows like melted silver. It illuminated hundreds of birdcages. The birds fell silent as I entered the room. As one, they turned on their perches and watched me with inscrutable black eyes.

My predecessors.

Baba had told me I was to become a hummingbird if the prince didn’t take me. Looking around, I saw everything but hummingbirds. Great horned owls with twitching feathery tufts, speckled brown sparrows, proud blue jays, slender white cranes, tiny goldfinches with little black hats, all of them stood perfectly still and watched me.

Perhaps I could free these women from their enchantments. I opened my arms wide and spoke some sacred words. Nothing happened. All the birds gave a great squawk of disappointment.

For the next hour, I opened every cage and freed the birds. They walked or flew in a cloud around my head, making no noise. When the last birdcage was open, I pushed the door wide and went into the hallway. A blackbird flew ahead and paused, hovering in midair, looking at me. I followed.

Through the castle I followed the blackbird, down and out, treading on bunched carpet and cold tile. When we reached the main door, I pushed it. No one had locked this door, and it swung wide. The blackbird flew outside to freedom… and transformed. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair, tangled and disheveled. She looked at her long white hands and smiled.

“Come!” she cried, and her voice was the raucous call of a blackbird.

The cloud of birds flew through the doorway, each transforming in the moonlight to the woman she had once been.

When every last bird was through the door, I followed. We left the door standing wide and started to run together, running for freedom.

It was time to go see Baba.

Hummingbird, part two

The prince shoved me into the carriage and followed me inside. Baba trailed behind him, calling for payment. He slammed the door in her face and called for the driver to whip up the horses. The carriage lurched into motion, and I clung to my seat to avoid being rocked onto the prince. With Baba gone, I relaxed a little. I didn’t know what the prince was capable of, not yet, but I knew only Baba could turn people into birds.

We both remained silent for the carriage ride up to the castle. When we halted, the prince grabbed my arm again and yanked me outside. I ran to keep up with my dragged arm, stumbling twice. The prince led me through the castle gate, flanked by liveried servants, and into the building. The high ceiling dwarfed me, and I felt myself shrinking at the shoulders.

He led me down hallways, up spiral staircases, through grand rooms, and up more stairs. Left, right, left, right, right, up, over, left, through... I became completely lost. As my breath began to come more raggedly, he finally halted before a large wooden door and opened it. “Your quarters, wife,” he said.

An icy chill ran down my spine at the word, but I gave a half-bow and entered the room he indicated. As I was staring at the furnishings and trying to take in my new surroundings, the door shut behind me. I heard the sliver of a steel lock slide into place outside the door.

I waited for hours. I paced the room, treading on the thin rug and cold tile floor without noticing their grandeur. Someone sent up food when the light in the window grew orange. I gobbled down the warm stew hungrily and waited for full dark to descend outside the window that overlooked the steep forest below.

When darkness fell, no one came to light my fire. I took that as a sign that no one would be wandering the corridors. I knelt by the door and pressed my lips to the keyhole. I had learned a few tricks from being Baba’s slave. I whispered the sacred words, and I heard the lock slide away. I turned the handle. The door opened without resistance. I crept into the hallway and shut the door behind me, panting softly. I had to escape.

I went down the hallway and took my first left turn, then the last hall on the right, then through a dark dining room, and down some stairs. I walked to the third door on the right and opened it. A cupboard. I felt my panic rising. I was lost and I couldn’t get out even if I didn’t get caught.

I wandered the halls for hours, growing increasingly frustrated as I tried and failed to get out of the castle. On my eighteenth failure, I sank to my knees and wept softly.

It was then I heard it. The call of a thousand birds.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hummingbird, part one

I stared at the white expanse outside my window. The glass was smudged, fogged... but it didn’t matter because there was nothing to see out there but snow. This was the first carriage I had ever been in that had a glass window. I wasn’t thrilled about it; it let in the cold. Suddenly the horses stopped; I threw out my arms to prevent myself from toppling to the floor.

“It’s time,” said Baba.

She reached out; I flinched away from her. She slapped my arm with one hooked hand; the sting was sharp and immediate. She pinched my cheeks. “Nice and rosy,” she said. Her voice turned dark. “You know what will happen if the prince doesn’t fancy you.”

“Yes, madam,” I said meekly. I felt my options slipping out from beneath me; soon I would be as a castaway, clutching an ice floe and treading frigid water. Baba had sworn to turn me into a hummingbird if the prince didn’t select me. I believed her.

I pulled up my hood to cover my red hair and opened the carriage door. The driver was standing outside; he held out his arm to help me down. I caught his eye and begged him silently, with my gaze, to help me. If he understood, he ignored me.

I straightened my dress and looked up. My breath caught. The castle was perched on the mountain straight ahead. It looked straight out of a fairy tale. But it looked desolate, unreachable, cold and drafty. I shivered.

A man hurried up to me. He stood only as high as my waist and had bluish skin, as if he were made of ice. He pressed a cup into my hands. I sipped tentatively and sighed. Hot glühwein. It warmed my spirits.

The little blue man suddenly prostrated himself on the snowy road as a very tall man with black hair approached. He wore a golden ring on every finger; this must be the prince. I curtseyed.

The man spoke in a cold voice. “What is this you have brought me, Baba?”

“Your future wife, your highness,” Baba said. “She is timid and pretty and knows how to cook.”

“What need have I for a cook? I have three already.”

“She comes from good stock,” Baba said, ignoring the prince. “But her family are all deceased, so none will pester you.”

The prince considered me for the first time. I withered under his gaze. I stared at the ground as Baba continued to wheedle, but her voice fell on my ears as random noise. I was so afraid, my hand shook out some of the glühwein from my cup. It fell on the snow like a splash of red, red blood.

Abruptly the prince grabbed my arm. Roughly. I gasped and dropped the cup. The prince paid no mind and steered me into a gilt carriage that was waiting nearby. I should have been listening more carefully. What had he decided? Was I to be transformed, turned into another bird for his collection? Or was I to be enslaved as his wife?

And which was worse?

TO BE CONTINUED...