Techniques in Appalachian Fiction: Authentic Voice and Dialect in Gap Creek

In Gap Creek, Robert Morgan's primary goal is to create an authentic Appalachian voice in the first person narrative. He states this in a supplementary section at the end of the book, but he didn't need to say it, the voice of the narration stands out as being the most important element of the book.

 

The narrator breaks a lot of the traditional rules of telling a story: she uses second person occasionally, she infodumps the step by step process of butchering a hog, tells her emotions instead of just letting us figure it out by what she does, and sometimes says what other people are thinking even though she can't possibly truly know. Despite all of these technical flaws, the narrator tells the story the way someone's Appalachian ancestor would tell it. She tells it just like my grandma would have and wouldn't have minded at all if it wasn't the proper way to do it. 

The current scholarship (which I will likely discuss in a later post) is that is very uncool to depict Appalachians as people who are ignorant, isolated, foolish, oversexed, violent, and/or alcoholic. Put plainly, writers should think Beverly Hillbillies and avoid doing that at all costs. I tend to agree with this. The challenge is to create characters that avoid stereotypes and seem authentic at the same time.

One thing that stood out to me in Gap Creek is the use of the word poke: "And for Christmas he got four oranges and a poke of peppermint candy" (2). A poke is a bag. I know this because it was one of the "hillbilly" words listed on the centerpiece of a Cracker-Barrel-ish restaurant that we took my grandma to when she was in town when I was a kid. I have never ever seen poke used in any other book or story I've ever read.

A few examples of Morgan's use of Appalachian dialect are:

• Pneumony instead of pneumonia (6).
• "He looked scared out of hisself" (5).
• "If we was to pour it down his throat he might strangle" (7).
• ". . . he woke up with the pains" (2).
• "He dropped the egg on his plate like he had touched a rotten tater" (56).
• "My hands liked to froze. . . " (4).

I think he did a fabulous job with the dialect in this novel. In the current version of my novel, I avoided this kind of dialect for the most part in favor of avoiding stereotypes. But I think I need to work on it a little more.

Next I will look at the dialect used in novels by two women who grew up and have become advocates for the environment in Appalachia: Barbara Kingsolver and Denise Giardina. I also will have another piece about narration in Cold Mountain.

If you would like to view the other posts on Gap Creek and other Appalachian novels, click on Techniques in Appalachian Fiction

IWSG - Better Late Than Never

It looks like I almost completely missed today's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  I am out of town in a land of bad internet connectivity.

I spent my morning in the archive room of the Scott County Historical Society in Huntsville, Tennessee. I found some very interesting facts, but mostly it was super overwhelming being surrounded by a billion records and not knowing where to start.

My daughter is with me, and we spent the afternoon in Knoxville at the East Tennessee Historical Society in the special collections room. All I have to say is they were super rude and treated us like we were going to steal their records and books.

There weren't many people there despite the fact the place was enormous and had so much information. It's really too bad, because they had lots of information there. They made us lock up our belongings on the way in, let us know there are papers and pencils available at each table, and only on our way out told us we could have made copies despite the fact there are signs everywhere forbidding the copying of documents. Why even have books and records there to share if you don't actually share them? Very annoying.

We just returned from walking the family cemetery, which is coincidentally less than a mile from our hotel. We found the headstone of my grandmother's sister, who died when she was a toddler after she fell into a tub of lye when her mom was doing the laundry. So sad. She was buried near her grandparents. The flowers next to her grave were knocked over, so we fixed them up for her.

I don't really have any writing insecurities to share except that it is quite difficult to do research for historical fiction. Despite the difficulty, it has been a fun trip, and we've found some cool things unexpectedly, like this sign near the river where my ancestors used to hang out:

I'll do my best to check in on the other IWSG posts this weekend when I have a better connection.

IWSG - September 2013

I'm not insecure about my writing exactly . . . I definitely used to be.  Lately I feel confident my writing ability.  What I'm not so certain about is if I can carve out the time I need to focus on the actual writing.  I have a lot going on in my life that needs to take priority right now.  So I'm working on revisions to my historical novel a little tiny bit at a time. 

Something is better than nothing.  And some things need to come first.  I'm also confident about that.

Writing historical fiction is definitely my thing, but it is incredibly difficult.  I never would have believed the amount of detail that would go into it.  But I love my story and my ancestors who inspired the story enough that I am going to give it what it needs to make it awesome.  One slow chapter at a time.

While I'm waiting for my schedule (and my mind) to clear up so I can get back to writing, I am working on research and am trying to do it as efficiently as possible.

One of my college professors told me about the oral history collection at the University of Kentucky Library.  The library will send you mp3 files just for asking.  This is working great for me since I can slam them onto my iPod and do research while I'm taking care of the rest of my life.

The cool thing I've found about the ones I've listened to so far is the everyday life details that come to the surface like the thing where they called a piece of linoleum a rug (my grandma did that too but I had forgotten) and the way their tone changes when they talk about people that died.  These recordings are priceless.  I'm looking forward to listening to more this week.

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This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group formed by Alex J. Cavanaugh. 

Creative Writing as a Research Method?

I took my first graduate level English class this past Spring, Intro to Graduate Studies in English.  Basically, it was a crash course in literary theory.  We also got practice writing different types of documents that will likely be required in future classes: an annotated bibliography, a précis, a book review, and a research paper. 

We also got practice presenting - lots of practice.  We were required to do a fifteen minute presentation of our final paper.  It may as well have been an hour. 

The other thing covered in the class was research methods for English studies, which is an odd thing because, for creative writing in particular, what's there to research?  All you have to do is read some books and do some internet searches, right? 

But this ended up being the cool thing about the class.  In the last several weeks, professors would come to class and speak on a different type of research methodology and how it applies to research they've done.  My background is in software development - I'm a very logical, black and white kind of girl, so a lot of the topics seemed like a stretch to me.

The book we read was Research Methods for English Studies by Gabriele Griffin.  Some of the topics presented were visual methodologies, oral histories as a research method, discourse analysis, and biography/autobiography as a research method.  Each of the topics made no sense to me until after it was presented. 

My class was full of young people, twenty-somethings that worked at Starbucks and were not confident enough to ask questions.  Or maybe they didn't get the fact that the money they paid for tuition was a fee for having their questions answered.

I've been at the front of a room facing disinterested people before.  When no one spoke up, I asked questions.  By the third presentation, this was my implied role in the class. 

For the presentation on visual methodologies, my question was (and sort of still is) this:  What do visual arts have to do with research you would do for a research paper or a creative work?  The answer:  we paint pictures with words.  Very true.  But I still have a hard time connecting the word research with visual arts.

The one topic that became very clear and useful to me as a writer is creative writing as a research methodology.  Before the presentation and even after reading the text, I had the idea in my mind that this meant reading your genre, not just reading it, but knowing the works of the best writers and paying attention to the craft they use to unfold the story.  This summer I'm reading Toni Morrison for that purpose. 

But that wasn't it at all.  Not even close.

The idea is that we are doing research every time we write a sentence.  With every draft we experiment with different ways to tell the story for the optimum effect.  We arrange words in a precise manner and rearrange them again.  In doing this, we are contributing to the field of English literature.  Huh.

It's kind of a crazy idea, but I'm finding it to be true with the novel I'm working on.  I wrote the first draft in third person the way I always write.  This novel is historical fiction set in western Virginia in the 1930's.  I generally knew about the region, the time period, and the living conditions.  My people are from that area, and I feel connected to it.  I knew I had a lot of research to do, but I opted to get the story down on the page before adding most of the historical backdrop. 

The story is written.  The characters are very real to me.  The plot, sub-plots, and themes are all there on paper and won't change with revisions.  When I reread the chapters, I like the story. 

I've done my research (the normal kind where I read a lot of books and visited the location).  I need to modify the details of the setting and the historical details - that alone is a huge amount of work.  But I find myself in research mode - this odd, creative-writing-research mode that I'd never considered before.  And it's taking me weeks and lots of experimenting with telling the story different ways to get a single chapter just right. 

The problem is I need about 21,000 words to be just about right by the end of August when my next class starts.  So I'm going to allocate 2 hours a day to writing, and I'm not sure that's enough.  I normally set my goal to be a chapter a day, but that's not going to be realistic at this stage. 

This morning while painting the walls of the stairwell that leads to my basement, I finally found the way to present chapter two.  I put down the paintbrush and grabbed a journal so I could write it down quickly before the idea was lost in the paint fumes.  I have a lot of painting to do.  Next time I'll have a pen and journal with me.

Do you experiment with multiple versions of the same chapter?  Have you ever thought about the act of writing creatively to be a mode of research?

IWSG - Realistic Speech Patterns

On the off chance you don't know it, it's time for Insecure Writer's Support Group.  I'm pretty sure it's never too late to join....


This week, I am doing what probably no one else anywhere is doing.  As part of the research for my historical novels, I'm reading a book on Appalachian speech patterns written by two linguists, one of whom is apparently a rather famous one.  How odd is it that I know the relative fame of linguists?

I find it amusing that linguists (at least the ones whose books I've read so far) don't write in a way that's particularly easy to understand.  You'd think they'd be able to pick the exact perfect words to get their point across since theoretically they know them all.  I had a similar experience when I worked with speech therapists in a former job. 

It's a difficult read, but I'm certain it will be worth it.   

I also plan to listen to the lovely collection of oral histories that the librarians at the University of Kentucky library were kind enough to send me along with the transcripts.  They have recordings of relatively recent interviews of women that lived in coal towns in Appalachia in the early 1900's.  I like listening to them much more than reading them.  In the last one I listened to, the woman's voice softened when she told about losing her babies to scarlet fever.  It brought a tear to my eye.  She was an old woman when the recording was made, but you could hear in her voice the pain she still felt. 

I've lived all my life with people that came from the hills, most of whom left to get work in the city (Cincinnati) and some of whom tried their best to wipe any traces of that past from their speech.  Others held onto their speech patterns and knew it was a part of their heritage they should be proud of - or maybe they couldn't hear they talk differently.

When I read a chapter of my historical novel to my class, the professor who came to critique it (me) said she thought Appalachians don't actually drop the final G in words like looking or talking.  I'm guessing they do - because I didn't know I was dropping my G's when I read it, and the G's were right there on the page.  She suggested I research this so I can justify my choices, and I think that's a good idea too.


What has this to do with insecurities?  Nothing except that I'm not feeling insecure.  I feel like I'm on the right path with my writing - it's just an incredibly slow one. 

I just hope to be feeling better soon so I can pick up the pace a bit. 

I think I'll be away from here for a while - maybe in and out. 

Insecure Writer's Support Group - May, 2013

 

It's Insecure Writer's Support Group day, hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. 

 

 

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I'm not feeling insecure this month.

I've been on a blogging break for the past few weeks, but not a writing break.  I needed to take the time to work on my writing for my class.  The ending project was a research paper or about ten pages of creative writing.  I chose to do an excerpt from my historical novel, which is not what I planned to do at all.  I did a ton of research on the time period and the region of my novel and on coal mining. 

I did all the work I meant to do anyway.  I read all the books I had already purchased and utilized my university's library, who will hunt down books and/or purchase them if they don't have them.  Awesome, huh? 

After logging probably over 100 hours of research, I feel secure about the historical research I've done.  When I presented my chapter, I had to answer questions to defend my choices. I knew crazy details like how much coal miners paid to rent company homes in 1932 and how they were paid (by the ton).  I feel like I can walk around the region and the time period in my mind, which is cool.

And I got positive feedback about my writing.  I know where to put a comma, which is important for a writer. :)

But the real reason I don't feel insecure is this.  My middle son was sitting across the kitchen table from me.  I asked if he wanted to read the chapter I was working on for class.  I told him what happens in my story.  The more words came out of my mouth, the more interested he looked (a rare thing for an almost teen).  He thought my story was awesome!  Seriously, what could be better than that?

On Historical Research and An Idea

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I decided to use the opening chapter of my first historical novel for my research project for my Intro to Graduate Studies class. 

The bad thing about this is I only have fourteen days to finish the research I need for my annotated bibliography. 

The awesome thing is this means I'll have most of the research for my novel completed in two weeks.

The research has been incredibly inspiring.  In the margins of my books and in my notes, I've jotted down ideas for other stories and scenes I want to insert in my current story.  I know the word scenes is normally reserve for plays, but they feel like scenes to me, so that's what I call them. 

I had a little bit of time on Friday evening to write fiction (and not scribbles in my calendar or in the margins of my books or on the back of discarded envelopes like I've been doing for the past two weeks).  I lost myself in the writing and was late picking up my daughter from work.  I felt really great to be back to writing but even better to be assured that what I was writing was historically accurate (as much as it can be).

The majority of what we've done to date in my class is literary theory - lots of it.  On the surface, literary theory seems very abstract and, well, theoretical and not applicable to the act of writing normal novels for normal people.  But I've found it to be a useful way of looking at my own writing through crazy-colored goggles I hadn't tried on before (at least not since I was in my 20's). 

I think I might do a little series on literary theory for real writers.  I promise it won't be as boring as my textbook.  Just short posts on what we can actually use from each theory.

I might do one or two posts for nerds only (you know who you are).  Apparently I spent years designing software using a methodology that was absolutely based on semiotic theory.  I feel like I've taken the red pill, and now I can see how the reality I used to live in was constructed. (Matrix reference - I'm not really taking any pills.)

It's time to bury myself in history books.  For those of you that offered your condolences, I sincerely appreciate it.  I'm having a hard time responding to everyone that's visited lately.

A Magical Doorway Opened...

Today I called my mom.  In passing, I told her about the progress of my novel that's set sort of near one of the towns where she grew up in the Appalachian Mountains.  She usually doesn't express much of an interest in my writing and doesn't even try to fake it.  It's just how our relationship is.  I knew I was kind of talking to myself and didn't expect much of a response.

But something I said about the research I was doing on two particular coal mining disasters had the effect of opening a magic doorway into the past. 

For forty-five minutes she shared with me her memories of living in a coal town.  I knew my dad had lived in a coal town but didn't know my mom had.  She even told me about the mining accident that her dad and grandfather were involved in.  Her descriptions made me feel like I was there and validated much of what I already had in my novel.  She also told me some things that went against the grain of what I've been reading in history books that generalize the region. 

I felt like a dwarf from The Hobbit sitting in a pile of gold treasure.

I did write down notes while I talked to her - I was on a corded phone, so I grabbed a black sharpie and scribbled on the back of grocery lists, my kids' homework, junk mail, anything I could reach.

I called her back a few hours later (after typing up the notes) to thank her for sharing with me and to assure her that nothing I'm writing is going to be even close to biographical.  I know that's something she would worry about.  What I'm writing is definitely fiction. 

Holy crap - she opened up again and gave me a fantastic idea for yet another novel.  She was every bit as excited about the writing I'm doing as I am.  How cool is that?!  She asked me to come over and talk with my step-dad, whose grandparents grew up in the same region. 

This is the best day ever.  I can't even express how happy I am - for one, I'm drowning in story ideas - I could spend the next twenty years writing about characters in this region.  And I've made an amazing connection with my mother that I never expected.

If I ever make money from this adventure, I'm going to buy something incredible for my mom just to thank her for the inspiration she gave me today.  That's some good motivation to strive to make lots of money.

Short Stories....

Inspired by Milo James Fowler's success, I am signing up for Write1Sub1 for 2013. I love the participation badge.

 

 

 

 

 

My plan is to write short stories whenever I get into a funk with novel writing - when my desk is too dirty (it an overwhelming a mess right now), when I get stuck, when I can't decide which project to work on, or when I just need a break.  I'm headed to graduate school in the fall - I'd rather be armed with a stack of short stories than none at all.

 

I intend to write stories involving the ancillary characters in the historical novels I'm writing.  If nothing else, the stories will help me flesh out the historical details and immerse myself in the period.

 

I went to the gym this week and walked around the indoor track.  The sign on the beige wall says you have to do the outside loop nine times to walk a mile.  I haven't made it around nine times yet - or maybe I have - it's so boring that I lose count.  When I was there this week, I wrote a short story in my mind. 

 

Maybe I can write 12 short stories and lose 12 pounds this year just by walking while staring at beige walls.  I think I'll peel on my yoga pants this morning and get it done after taking the small one to preschool.  Must remember my tiny notebook and a pen this time.

 

If you haven't already, check out Milo James Fowler's post - you will find it inspiring whether you write short stories or not.

 

On Outlines and Timelines

I am surprised to say that I got most of the family trees done for my characters.  I thought it would take longer.  My characters have names and 4/5 of them have birth and death dates that put them where I need them to be historically. 

To figure out where the characters fell in history (and so I could adjust their dates of birth if necessary), I created a timeline using Publisher and drew vertical lines for every five years with the year labeled in a horizontal band at the bottom of the page.  I had to send my husband out for legal sized paper so I could fit all the years I needed across one page.

I added a textbox for every character and added their birth and death date and anything noteworthy about the character without writing a full synopsis in a tiny textbox.  The cool thing about doing this is I had to think about when and how each person would die and how old they were when they had children (lots of children).  I had to give all of the characters a story. 

Now I have five pages of timeline mostly completed - only one page lacks birth and death dates - the characters are listed randomly on the page. 

Now it's time to do a little more historical research and a little bit of adjustment to my outlines.  With some luck, I should be able to write the first chapter on October 1, which would be awesome - it was my grandma's birthday.  One of the stories is for her. 

(For my nerd-friends out there, isn't it funny how the spell check function doesn't recognize the word textbox even though its executed inside a textbox?  What's with that?)

Planning Historical Fiction - Characters

I'm starting to feel a little nomadic in my career path.  For about 12 years, I worked in the IT department of a large metropolitan hospital where I designed and developed about 30 software applications with corresponding databases and also planned out the transition from custom software to a new multi-million dollar system.  A lot of the time was spent diagramming and documenting processes, data flow, user requirements, and even detailed function calls.  (This is where the nerdliness of this post stops - I hope you are still here.)

Now I'm writing novels, specifically a historical fiction series that's also a family saga.  I think diagramming function calls is profoundly easier than mapping out the details for these novels.  Yikes. 

I am happy to say, I have finally named my characters.  This is a huge check mark off my to-do list. 

To decide on character names, I took names from my family tree on both sides of the family including siblings of each person - there were a terrifyingly huge number of siblings, like one baby a year until the mother died. 

I made separate lists of male and female first names.  Then I listed last names and added to that list last names I thought would be reasonable like Crabtree and McKinley.  Then I jumbled it all up to create character names that don't correspond to anyone I'm actually related to.  Some of my more senior relatives would be pissed if I used real names, especially since it's fiction...dark tragic fiction.

To manage the characters' names and relationships, I created multiple family tree charts (pedigree style) using Publisher.  From what I gather, the pedigree family tree is a sideways tree that starts with one person and lists only their immediate ancestors.  I wanted to list the siblings of the character I was mapping as well as their children, so I added boxes as well as a bar at the bottom to note the historical events that are important in the story.  It ended up looking sort of like this:

(If anyone has a use for something like this, I have no problem sharing out the file.)

The next step was to assign birth dates to each character while keeping in mind the historical context of each novel.  One of my characters needs to go to the mental hospital in 1940 because they stopped doing electroshock therapy in 1941.  That means she has to have had her second child in 1940 for the plot to work.  I knew how old I wanted her to be when she had that child, so I set her birth date to 1920. 

I realized I had complete chaos because different trees started in different generations than others. (And I wanted to cry.)  To make it easier for me to line up characters of the same generation across different trees, I put a label on the document to note the generation.  Generation 1 for the series (the most recent characters) is born around 1920, Generation 2 around 1900, etc.  So far, my series has eight generations and several families.   

When I figure out how to diagram historical dates to individual characters' lives and also note where individual novels begin and end, I'll report back.  I think I need something with a grid in the background. 

I am absolutely open to suggestions if anyone has done this.  I wish I had a copy of Rational Rose, software we used to diagram detailed function calls, which are essentially cause and effect relationships. 

Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane and Other Research

I hope to get back into writing mode this week.  *Fingers crossed*

While not writing over the last few weeks, I've been plotting and outlining several stories.  Maybe that counts.  In one of the novels, which I outlined during a parent orientation, the main character does some time in a mental institution in Kentucky in 1940 just before they stopped doing electroshock therapy.

I found several pictures of the mental hospital, Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane, which has since been demolished if my sources are correct.  The site with the best picture, the one I wanted to post, says the information is copyrighted and that consent must be obtained to reproduce it.  And it lists no email address or phone number that I can find to request this information. 

It looks like the picture that I so desperately want to post here was taken from a book that's out of print.  I hope the web site (that won't allow me to reproduce the picture) got permission from the author.  There are three used copies of the book available on Amazon for just under $100, which seems a bit pricey. 

Here's the link if you want to see the picture and/or read the background information.  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyjeffer/CentralState/CentralStateHospital.html

The story will not be an ode to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Only one chapter will be set in the mental hospital, although the character will be plagued with mental illness throughout the second half of the book.  How she and her family cope with it will be the fun part to write I think.

Mostly the stories I intend to write in this series are about how people in rural Appalachia survived during a period where things were unbelievably difficult.  The more research I do, the more I realize how easy I have it.  And the more I see how I actually have a lot of things in common with my ancestors. 

As I dig through the history of this time period (1830's through 1940's) and region, I think I'll post some of my research here.  Hopefully I'm not the only one that finds it to be intriguing.

Revelation...Not the Biblical Kind

Last night as I struggled to get my little guy to close his eyes, book two of a historical series revealed itself to me.  Lucky for me it took a really long time sitting next to him in the dark for him to nod off.  I had lots of time to think with little interruption, only me saying, "Close your eyes."

I've been writing at the story without the complete story for book 2 worked out.  I know the characters and how their stories interrelate with the other characters' stories in the other books.  The series is historical fiction and a multi-generational family saga.

Until last night, I had no idea how I was going to pull it off technically.  Specifically, I wasn't sure where the second book would end and the next one would begin.  I didn't have the climax worked out for book 2.  And I wasn't sure where book 3 would start.

I have it now, and I'm outlining this morning.  Maybe all week.   

IWSG: Drama

It's time for Insecure Writer's Support Group.  Thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh for joining us together for this monthly group hug.

I feel confident about my ability to write dark comedies.  I have the second draft of two dark comedies completed and have three new ones started.  It would be relatively easy to dive into one of these new pieces and knock it out.  I love making people laugh and feel like I have my groove on with this genre. 

But I can never make things easy on myself.  Instead, I feel compelled to write historical fiction that's definitely dark but not even a little funny.  There's not even a trace of humor in it, but there's lots of drama.  It's a three book series that will require a significant amount of research.

I want to write something else, anything else, but the characters in this very unfunny series are at the front of the queue in my mind.  They are ready to go.  They have names and personalities.  They are begging me to get on with it already and tell their stories.  I haven't written much this summer because these stories have been simmering in my mind, using up most of my creative energy.

When I told my husband my dilemma, he said I should just go for it.  If I can't write it, I'll know soon enough.  No, he didn't say that last line.  He's way too supportive to express any doubt and is a genuine believer in me.  That line was what I thought: If I can't write it, I'll know soon enough. 

But that's a terrifying thing to face - potential failure.  It's the boogeyman in my closet, and he's kind of creeping me out.

This past weekend, I let my teen try driving on the highway for the first time.  When she turned onto the entrance ramp to merge into 65 mph traffic, I said, "Please don't kill me. I'm not done with my book."

We laughed, but I meant what I said.  I'm not quite ready to die yet.  I have three manuscripts to edit and three more to write.  When I thought about the three unwritten books, I wasn't thinking about the comedies.  I was thinking about the historical fiction, the sad stories that will take me two or three years to write.

It's time to put a box of tissues on my desk and get busy.  If I can't write it, I'll know soon enough.

A Big Bucket of Cake Batter

While I was on vacation, I began sketching out my ideas for a historical fiction series very loosely based on my ancestors lives.  No one is alive to tell their stories, and I only have some ancestry.com research that's sketchy at best. 

The thing I discovered about my grandparents and their grandparents and so on is this:  one generation after the next had no hope of bettering their economic situation.  They were in survival mode, most of them farming on a rocky hillside that they didn't even own to feed their own families.  Some worked in the coal mines and one was a minister.  There's a mix of Cherokee Indian in every branch of the tree. 

Most of the boys up to my great-grandparents generation didn't attend school.  They were listed on the census forms as farm laborers at the age of eleven and twelve.  My son is eleven.  I can't imagine him being done with school and pushing a plow as a full time job.  I can't even get him to vacuum his room.

I have an idea of how I want to write the stories.  I literally sketched it out while on vacation - a drawing of a mountain - the farther up the tiny houses are, the worse off the people's lives are. 

I'm really excited to get this started, but it feels a lot like trying to make seven or eight different cakes out of one huge bucket of batter.  Imagine a huge Hobart mixer with the beginnings of a whole lot of yummy treats in it.  Each cake/story needs to be distinct and stand on its own, but coordinate with the rest.  It's exciting and daunting at the same time.

I wrote everything on paper in a little journal including several random chapters.  My handwriting is almost impossible to read.  I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, but I need to dive in while it's still fresh in my mind.

I'll be back when I get this under control and finish those last three chapters of my WIP that I really wish I had written before vacation.

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Next post:  Tools to keep track of time lines in historical fiction.