The importance of research when writing historical fiction

So, I’m now writing my second novel, a story set in the 1830s. I literally just began to write it — I’m on page number one. And, I’ve already made a glaring error. I opened with my family of characters travelling on a train to their new home in north Georgia. It’s a long trip and they’re tired and the train is uncomfortable, etc. Fortunately, it dawned on me that trains were in their infancy in the 1830s and so, my poor little family would not be taking a train from New England to rural, mountainous north Georgia.

That would have been an embarrassing mistake! So, I made the necessary (minor) changes required to better line up my story with history. And now, back to writing (and researching)!

iPad Wallpaper for Writers

Hi everyone! I made a wallpaper for my iPad and wanted to share it with any others writers with iPads. It’s 1024×1024. Click on the image below for the full sized version.

New covers; Viewing a manuscript on the iPad (for editing)

I downloaded the image editing program Gimp yesterday! I made new covers for my two published short stories (see on “My Works” page), and, an attempt at making a cover for my romance novel, The World on a String. The first draft is nearly done (at 32,000 words as of this morning, figuring it will end around 45,000 – I like short novels, so it figures I would write a short one)! Yay! I thought it would be fun to go ahead and try to design a cover for the novel in order to figure out how to use Gimp. What do you think? This is my second attempt at the cover.

Now: as to viewing a manuscript on the iPad. I wanted to see my manuscript for The World on a String in my Kindle app on my iPad, as though it were an ebook (for editing purposes – similar to printing something out to see it in a different way). It was pretty easy to do, and it was neat seeing it close to its final form on screen. This is what I did:

In Pages on my iMac, I opened the manuscript file and clicked Share > Send via Mail – PDF. Sent it to my email address. Opened my email on my iPad, opened the message containing the pdf file, and clicked on the download icon for the file. When it opened, I clicked in the upper right corner on the little icon for sharing, and had the option “Open in Kindle”. Clicked that, and presto: my manuscript in the Kindle app, looking all nice and pretty and different. I caught a couple of errors right off the bat, since I was seeing it differently for the first time.

Writing Stats for my first Novel

I’ve been working on a novel, a contemporary romance that I dreamed up last year. I keep a log of various things about writing the novel that I thought I’d share here on my blog, for other data-lovers to see. I know I could do so much more, but I tend to get distracted easily and my writing stamina is embarassingly low. It’s something I want to work on as I grow as a writer!

Words written per day / Total words / Hours worked:

2/10: 575 (575) (Day 1)

2/11: 2,311 (2,886)

2/12: 1,300 (4,186)

2/13: 608 (4,794)

2/14: 1,115 (5,909) (Day 5)

2/15: 974 (6,883)

2/16: 649 (7,532)

2/17: 868 (8,400)

2/18: 1,660 (10,060)

2/19: 2,285 (12,333) 2.3 hours worked (Day 10)

2/20: 1,972 (14,305) 3.1 hours

2/21: 135 (14,440) 0.5 hours

2/22: 2,000 (16,440) 3.2 hours

2/23: 775 (17,215) 1.2 hours

2/24: 115 (17,330) 0.1 hours (Day 15)

2/25: 1,225 (18,555) 1.4 hours

2/28: 770 (19,325) 1 hour

3/1: 2,000 (21,325) 2 hours

3/2: 1,707 (23,032) 2 hours

3/3: 1,500 (24,532) 1.7 hours (Day 20)

3/4: 488 (25,020) 0.8 hours

3/6: 121 (25,141) 0.1 hours

3/7: 271 (25,412) .3 hours

3/9: 38 (25,450)

3/11: 605 (26,055) .6 hours (Day 25)

3/12: 1,140 (27,195) 1.2 hours

3/13: 385 (27,510) .4 hours

3/14: 1,025 (28,535) 1.1 hours

3/15: 1,000 (29,535) .8 hours

3/20: 329 (29,864) .7 hours (Day 30) (so far for today)

Average words written per “working day” / avg words written per day total (including days I did not write):

995 / 765

Okay, yeah, those averages are pretty bad, and I know I could do a lot better! I think putting my numbers up here for the world to see might be a good kick in the butt to improve my productivity! Oh, that reminds me, those average words written per day are just for that novel, not including the short stories I also might be working on, on any given day. So, with all my writing included, it looks a little bit better. But still, I could be getting more words down in my novel!

Inspiration from a photograph – A Prostitute of 1912

A few weeks ago, I saw a webpage with old photographs of prostitutes from 1912. They were all very interesting, but the 13th one down, of the dark-haired girl sitting with the stole wrapped around her, interested me the most. She just looks so sad. It broke my heart to see the expression on her face. Right away, I started writing a story about her, that became my short story “A Prostitute of 1912″. In my mind, I wanted to give this woman some sort of a happy ending.

It’s available on the Kindle store, and today it’s free to download: 

A Prostitute of 1912

Farmer’s Market

Farmer’s Market is my new contemporary romance short story, now available on the Kindle Store for $0.99. I’ve found that I love writing these types of stories! The novel I’m working on is a contemporary romance (though set in 1955, it’s not a historical romance, per se), and is nearly done. For the time being, though, why don’t you check out this short story? Click the cover above to go to its page on the Kindle Store!

 

Fun with Google Street View

I’m currently writing my second attempt at a novel and my male protagonist’s hometown is Clewiston, FL. Just for fun, I went to Google Maps and plunked the little orange guy down in a random location in Clewiston to have a look around. This image is the first thing that came up (I got confused at first then realized what it was!). How funny – what are the odds of me putting the marker down right where the Google car was beside a tanker?

I saw an elusive Google Street View car once, in Albuquerque, New Mexico about two years ago. I suppose it’s akin to seeing Bigfoot or Nessie.