Deep in the past

Elsewhere on this site I've described my earlier (false) belief that I would never write a work of nonfiction.  Not false, exactly, just later proven untrue--witness the upcoming publication of my memoir Love is the Thread.  I never thought I would write a work of historical fiction, either.

One of the key members in the first writers group I ever joined wrote historical fiction.  I admired and respected her.  Her books carried me back into the past.  Because of her, I read other historical fiction, from mysteries to the occasional romance novel.  (Without realizing it, I had savored a historical mystery fairly early in my reading career.  Agatha Christie's Death Comes as the End, set in ancient Egypt.  Quite a trend setter, Dame Agatha.)

But I recognized the weight of research needed to underpin that type of story.  Delving into my characters and their feelings, drafting, revision and editing provided me with more than enough work to do.  That was my opinion.

What happened?  I found the women of the Apocrypha fascinating from the first time I discovered they existed, one rainy day when I was nine years old.  Stuck inside the house all afternoon, I tugged an old book out of the shelves built beside the fireplace, and the heating duct my sisters and I always fought over when the weather turned chilly.

As I turned the stiff, oversized pages I had no idea I had just embarked on the research for my first (only?) historical novel, to be written a number of decades later. I only knew these women from long ago, in a time and place I could barely picture, set my imagination alight.

Today I walked beside one of those women as she approached the encampment peopled with her tribe's enemies.  Judith and her friend and maidservant Abra left their village to weave their way past hundreds of Assyrian soldiers.  Would they reach the safety--and graver danger--of the general's pavilion?

Even though I spent a week in a university library earlier this year studying the type of swords, the kind of armor worn by the Assyrians, and even though I am on the seventh or eighth version of the chapter, I trembled along with those two ancient women, and had to squint at the clock in the corner of my computer screen when an incipient headache and rumbling stomach brought me back to the present era.

I don't know why I ever doubted a foray into historical fiction.  I love my character.  And I love traveling with her deep into the past.

Awakening

It's been a challenging couple of months. The car broke down three times. I've been unwell twice, including my present head cold. The computer broke down, as I believe I mentioned before, but all is well now. And I realized I've worked non-stop on Judith since well before I left for the research trip back in April.

A more important realization has unfolded over the last couple of months, something I've known for years but only with my head or my brain. Now I comprehend it with my heart, or my full consciousness. Something like that.

I realized that every time I revise a manuscript--or every time I've done so up until now--I've believed "this was it." It. The final draft. But as I've worked through this very special revision, which integrates the research from my week in the library, I am recognizing that there is more yet to do. Another revision probably won't be enough. I can glimpse Judith and her friends, her neighbors and enemies as they grow more fully into themselves and into their world.

They're just not there yet. How many manuscripts have I written now? A dozen at least, from children's book manuscripts, murder mysteries, the memoir and more. Yet I feel I'm only beginning to understand the old maxim, "Writing is revision." And revision is seeing again, more clearly.

It feels like I've outgrown (or at least broken through one layer) of the familiar writer's urge to be done. To have written instead of being inside the writing. I'm happy to be here.

Judith

I leave Monday morning for my research trip to UK. My research questions spill over onto a seventeenth page, all single spaced and categorized, from Architecture and Agriculture to Wine and Weaponry. Many of the questions are actually variations on a topic that appears in dozens of places throughout the novel. (I included a chapter by chapter reference so integrating the research will be easier in the months after my return. That's the plan, anyway.)

I've also searched the library's online catalog so there's no time wasted on day one of my trip. As I always told my students, in the two decades when I taught college, "Don't be too task oriented." I'll find this original layer of texts . . . then browse the shelves in that area. Some of my most successful and enjoyable research discoveries all began that way, with a book or books I just happened to discover while I browsed the shelves.

That's how I've also often discovered authors I would never have read otherwise, in that different kind of browsing in bookstores.

Can't wait to get started. Keep your eyes on this space for details as the story behind the story (the research in support of the novel Judith) unfolds.

Research

I'll be going on a research trip for Judith in the next month or so. Now that I'm recovered from my stomach flu of last week--on my birthday no less--I'm going through the novel and finalizing my list of questions to be answered. I have a general list/outline already; now I'm breaking it down by the page.

On any given page, sometimes in any given paragraph I'll have one question and sometimes more. They range from details of Assyrian armor to women's hairstyles from the period. I don't expect (or need) to answer every question, but I'm looking forward to learning more about my characters' world.

I plan to work through the novel and gather information, make lots of notes and photocopies and bring the data home from my week at the library. The integration of that information? That will take place at home over many weeks, probably months. I once said I never expected to write a memoir. I never expected to write an historical novel, either! This will be a very different way to revise for me. I'm looking forward to it.

More on how that works as it unfolds.