The HEA Cafe

Last month I blogged about “writing what you know”.  This month I’m blogging about “writing what you don’t know”.

My newest novel takes place mostly aboard a British frigate during the Napoleonic Wars.  My desk is now piled high with research books, some from the library and some I’ve purchased for myself.  I am full of Royal Navy trivia, and yet I know going into this that there’s no group of reading fans more rabid than Royal Navy buffs (with the possible exception of US Civil War buffs).  They will catch your mistakes–or what they think are your mistakes–so fast it’ll make your pixels spin.

For example, I have to figure out the date of my book.  If I have it set before 1805, the person who assisted the surgeon was called the surgeon’s mate.  After 1805, he’s technically the surgeon’s assistant, but no doubt most old timers still referred to him as the surgeon’s mate.  So if I set my novel in 1811, do I have to have a snippet of explanation saying, “Well, yes, Mr. Expendable is the surgeon’s assistant, but of course we all still refer to him as the surgeon’s mate”?

Decisions, decisions….

This also shows one of the pitfalls of deep research.  What a friend calls the “I did this research and you’re going to pay for it!” syndrome, where the author believes because she finds these tidbits fascinating, you must also find them fascinating or face her wrath!

I had to take pages and pages out of my last manuscript because I realized that while I found the story of Anna Jai Kingsley fascinating (Read Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley–African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner by Daniel L. Schafer for more), writing about her wasn’t advancing my own story and I had to stay focused on my H&H, not wander off into the delights of sharing research.

And while I’m ruminating on research, I must put in a plug for one of the most underutilized yet valuable tools a writer has, Inter-Library Loan.  If there’s a book you need for research, and your local public library doesn’t have it, ILL will get it for you.  From anywhere in the US where that book is in circulation.  You might not get it this week, but eventually it will turn up.  I wanted a copy of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett, an 18th C. Novel.  Our library didn’t have it, but within two weeks it was within my hands, shipped from a library in North Carolina.  ILL has given me access to many books published by the Naval Institute Press, books that if I had to buy them, even used, would quickly exhaust my budget.  Plus, these are often books I don’t need to keep, or just need to see a chapter or two.

Which leads me into my next thought, The Evils of the Interweb!  I’m often asked by budding young writers which websites to go to for research.  The answer is, “None of them should be a primary source.”  Oh, sure, it’s nice to be able to see pictures of the uniform of the U.S. Revenue Marine in 1845 at a website, but it’s much more valuable to read a comprehensive history of the Revenue Marine.  Here’s the thing a lot of new writers don’t realize–when you use books for research, you learn stuff you didn’t know you needed to know.  Also, books have editors.  Websites do not.  With a website it’s very much “Researcher beware!”  Sure, books can have mistakes too, but at least someone other than the author took a look at it before it got to the presses!

So when writing what you don’t know, consider your sources: visits to historical sites, if possible, are always worthwhile.  Read books.  Read some more books.  Then go to websites to see if there’s any tidbit or update you might have overlooked.  And finally, don’t make your reader pay for your pleasure.  Save your wonkiness for the next time you’re hanging with the period re-inactors.

“Write what you know” is one of the most fossilized commandments of How To Write. Sometimes writers take it too literally.  They think they have to be “method actors”, immersing themselves in roles before they can sit down at the keyboard and make their characters come alive. It doesn’t have to be that intense. I didn’t have to be a soapmaker to write about a character who’s a soapmaker (Amanda in Captain Sinister’s Lady), but I did have to do research on how soap was manufactured in the early 19th century.

Yet there is something to be said for “write what you know”, and we should always keep this in mind.  For one thing, you know more than you think and you should use it.  I may not have known at the outset how to make soap, but I knew what it smelled like to unwrap a fresh bar.  I also knew the gliding feeling of working up a lovely lather and what happens when you have soap that smells like almonds, or sandalwood, or roses, spreading its fragrance through a room.  That too is writing what you know–incorporating all the sensual details of your life into your writing.

And this is leading me back to my original thought behind this blog entry.  When I started writing my first novel, Pirate’s Price, it was set in England because, well, gosh, every historical is set in England unless it’s a US civil war story, right?

So I’d be sitting out there on my back porch, thinking about writing Regency London, when what I really wanted to do was describe how a clear February day in Florida gives you a sky so blue it makes your eyes hurt, how the red hawk in the tree bordering our yard was calling out its kee-yar cry, and how my neighbor’s orange trees were perfuming the entire block.

I wanted to write about what I knew–the North Florida landscape I’d lived in for over 30 years.  So I did.  I took trips to St. Augustine and walked the streets of the Ancient City, toured the Castillo de San Marcos, went to Fernandina to research its pirate history, and visited the various springs, rivers and geological sites that figure in my work.

It was fun, and it helped me give my writing an air of authenticity that I believe does spring from writing what you know–how something smells, how it feels, how it grows, how it sounds, what’s in bloom at certain times of the year, and when you would have a character attend a cane grinding.

When I had my heroine make a persimmon cake in Smuggler’s Bride, it was because I’d purchased some ripe persimmons at the farmers’ market and ended up using them in a spice cake (recipe upon request [g]), so I was “writing what I knew”.

Even if your story is set in a solar system far, far away, you can write with this kind of authenticity.  You can describe the foods your characters are eating, the fabric of their clothing, the sights they encounter based on your own experiences.  Each writer must in her own way incorporate her life experiences into her writing, because when it comes down to it, we’re all “writing what we know.”

I’ve just returned from the 10th Epicon Conference, with two trophies in hand. My novels Captain Sinister’s Lady and Pirate’s Price tied for Best Historical Romance in the 2007 Eppie competition.

EPIC is the Electronically Published Internet Connection, an organization for ebook writers and publishers. I was thrilled to have both my books make the finals, but to win the award in a tie against myself blew me away.
Sure, I’m feeling a little schizophrenic, but it does help me answer that question, “Which of your books do you like the best?” The answer is, “The one that won the award.”[g]
Darlene Marshall

Two of my novels, Captain Sinister’s Lady and Pirate’s Price, are finalists in the 2007 Eppie competition. The Eppies are awarded by EPIC, the organization for electronic authors and publishers, and will be given out at their conference, Epicon, in March in Virginia Beach.

There are three books in the finals for Historical Romance, so my chances of coming home with the trophy are looking pretty good. Now I need to get cracking on my WIP so I don’t lose the momentum!

Kudos to the RWA Online angels who put this together!

I’m Darlene Marshall, and I write stories set in the exotic and bug infested world of Territorial Florida.  Not much has changed since then–the bugs are still with us and we’ve managed to import a few new ones–but life in Florida is never dull.  And this time of year we’re darn glad to be here, as I was thinking today when tooling around town with the top down on my car.

I was a founding member of RWA Online back when it was in the old Romance Forum, and I’m looking forward to chatting with a whole new group of folks.