Week 58 – Trawling Time…

This week I have mainly been working on short stories.  There are four that came about from the task I told you about in the last post, and I have also been finalising some for submission.  I have a spreadsheet for things I send out and I am hoping to fill in a few more lines over the next week or so.

One of the things I like about short stories is that the research is limited, but can actually make a big difference to the quality of descriptions.  For example, if I’m looking for a house that a character rents, I’ll look at a property website for pictures so I can see the type of original features there may be – a soot-backed fireplace; a stable door; stained glass windows in red and blue panels.  One of the stories is based in the middle ages so healing plants have been important as one character is suffering from unpleasant symptoms of disease (as those middle-ages-types so often did!).

I love internet research.  With all my books, I can find guidance or general info, but the internet gives access to the kind of information that never appears in the textbooks I have as it’s too technical for general interest.  So, for example, I can look up different ways of treating toothache in the 14th century, or that a medieval gold coin was sometimes called a mancus, and was a months salary for a craftsman, or that Rowan as a female name is relatively recent (bang went my character’s name at that little nugget of information!) and that in parts of Canada, Rowan trees are called Dogberry.

You also come across some fabulous little stories – for example, you may remember in week 54 I talked about the woman in Spain who had painted over a picture of Jesus very badly.  Well this week I saw a follow up, where it was revealed that the church is charging people to see the painting, and the woman believes she is entitle to a percentage of these earnings (to be donated to charity) – the news just keeps giving ideas for tall tales and short stories!

I know that sometimes I get over-excited about the research – I don’t need to do as much for a short story as I often do – but it’s one of the perks of being a writer.  I’m learning new things all the time, and after all, you never know when they might come in handy…

Oh – and one last internet-related thought: I was going to change this post’s title because it makes me think of that classic ‘U Can’t Touch This’ (that’s my age showing!) but then decided to just link to the song instead!

In other news – this week, I decided to go to a clairvoyance evening.  I really wasn’t sure if this was something I actually felt comfortable doing, but it was a cheap night out to raise funds for a fitness group for kids, and I decided it could be good research – I have a character who is very likely to attend this sort of event.  It was interesting to see how messages unfolded, and I have to admit that I am intrigued by the experience.  I did also indulge myself and buy a chakra oil at the event too – research again, of course 😉 – so will see if that helps my writing as the seller suggested it might.  It won’t hurt to try, and maybe it’ll give me the inspiration for a masterpiece!

After the evening wound down, I ended up looking at old photos with friends.  This weekend, I’ve also been talking about the family archive with my mum, and I am getting a strong desire to write something based in the (semi)recent past.  Maybe I’ll add a plan for that into October’s project month work (which I’ll tell you all about next week!) if I can find a space…

Happy writing

EJ

🙂