Hippie Boy again in a photo I originally took for Instagram to show how much paper these two works in progress have accumulated. Of course, this doesn’t take into account the drafts I’ve recycled.
I know that I’m hyper conscious of doing research when I write, too much especially for books unlikely ever to be sold. Real-life events referred to go as far back as WW2 (and even the U.S. revolution!), and encompass world events as they impact my characters, the entertainment industry, and multiple locations, many of which I’ve never traveled to. I can check off anywhere in the South that I use, New York, and L.A. (plus I have a REALLY good L.A. source), but I’ve spent no time in Chicago, France, Canada, or Prague, for example. When I’m mostly content with my drafts, then I’ll call on my French and Chicago resources for some fact checking and language checks. Maybe even the Canadians I know. But they likely can be of little help when I’m asking for details of places from before they were born.
And it’s amazing all the things I can take for granted were in common use during my lifetime, but didn’t necessarily exist or exist the way I know them in the couple of decades before I was born. Just dumb things, for example, like: speaker phones and touch tone phones, copy machines, readily available bags of ice for purchase, certain toys, certain processed foods. All of those are things I’ve researched by now. Also: many decades of fashion and clothing manufacturers; the existence and locations of movie theaters in various cities and the trend toward malls; popular cars; what baseball teams were winning and when they changed home cities; hotels; airports and appropriate jets and even flight paths, direct flights, seating, airport concessions; tons of minutiae on horses and ranching, the music industry, the film industry on two continents, fine arts movements and trends; war, race, crime, politics, and education; even cosmetics and perfume. So many little details. Hours of searching and reading sometimes for one detail in a single sentence.
It’s A SHIT TON OF WORK. It’s why writing is slow for me. But even if nothing sells, even if no one ever reads it, I’m compelled to do my best to get it right. There’s only one thing I pushed up just a tiny bit for my plot, and that’s common/public knowledge about dyslexia. I never stop being aware I did it, but I’m cutting myself some slack on that.
I know things would be easier for me if I wrote breezy romances set in current day (at least before this pandemic). Character development, plot, plot, plot, humor, hopefully ever after endings. There are so many good books written like that with current-day settings, and I love reading them. But that’s not me. I couldn’t even write breezy and non-detailed when I wrote contemporary romances. My novels are dense with detail, and I recognize that. They’re not for everybody. Maybe anybody. Who knows.
I can’t write literature, and I can’t write light. I write what I write. My characters live as they live, love as they love, fail as they fail, triumph as they will against the backdrop of their times. Their whole lives matter to me, including the world they live in. Being true to their time and setting and giving them the most authenticity I can is what I do to satisfy myself.
Time, paper, sweat, blood, love. That is writing for me.
I don’t think writing in the current time period is easier because of cell phones, cell phone have ruined everything
There are a lot of good writers using cell phones/social media as the center of the conflict/plot points in their characters’ lives. Alisha Rai is great at it.
Cell phones/technology also give characters a sense of security and confidence that is often unwarranted and is itself the reason they get in dicey situations. Let that battery die or drop that phone in a swamp, or get locked in someone’s trunk without your phone, and everything changes. You can’t call for help. Can’t navigate your way out of a strange place.
Getting rid of a character’s access to a cell phone demands getting creative and can be fun in and of itself.
Cell phones can also be scary, because as a character, you can be tracked, harassed, bullied, etc. via a cell phone. (She’s sitting outside a Starbucks having her usual coffee drink, cell phone rings. She’s dependent on her phone for her marketing job; she doesn’t have the option of not answering an unknown number. “Yes?” “Why didn’t you let them put whipped cream on your Frappuccino?” a stranger’s voice asks. Tell me that’s not SCARY AS HELL. Beginning of meet cute or beginning of stalker situation?)
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series began in 1994 and is still being written, but the novels don’t encompass 26 years or Rex the Hamster would be long dead. She has to sort of float technology in there for readers who are tech savvy, but cell phones’ technology and use have changed drastically from 1994 to 2020. Suspension of disbelief in this case.
I agree with Marika. All those novels I never write are dead-ended, and it’s mostly the fault of cell phones. I’m not creative like you, et al. you mentioned. I’m pleased to read that Rex the Hamster continues well in his dotage. Stay dry over the next few days; stay safe always.
If you write as Geoffrey Chaucer, I suspect you could feature a dead hamster using a flip phone and that book would sell like hotcakes. I may change my pen name to Willa Shakespeare and try to snag two audiences…
I think we’ll be okay with Hurricane Laura. Will let you know when all is clear.