And it was great because I had this military diary that they literally talked day by day about what was happening, in the usual military way. There’s an element in my book that talks about internment camps in Canada, so I really did need to go and look at the military records and go through the military diaries of one particular internment camp. And it’s probably simply because your eyes are open to that kind of opportunity. It’s almost like synchronicity-books that will be useful to you pop up. It’s not necessarily that your friends know that you’re writing this book. But you will also find that a lot of really interesting, fortuitous books will pop up for you. Don’t read other novels necessarily right away. You know where to go, you know to read books about it.
I find as well, when you are interested in-let’s say you decide to write a book about the Salem witch trials. Imagine yourself in their position and go with that. They may use slightly different diction to speak, but their reactions and the way they go through the world, they’re going to be the same as us. The first thing I would caution people is to not make historical characters sound like they’re not like us.
Very specifically, where do you start with this? You mentioned a thousand years ago I’ve often wanted to write something that was that long ago just because it would be such a challenge. But very specifically, what do you do? Where do you begin? I know you go to the library, but where do you go in the library? What do you look for? Do you have a list of things that you give yourself, like a to-do list or things that I need to do before I can move on to writing? How do you manage something that unwieldy? I think you spoke to it a little bit ago about how at some point you have to trust yourself and shift from research to writing-you could go on interminably. This is the question that always comes up in my mind when I’m speaking to somebody who works in this genre, which is the issue of research, and how gargantuan a task it can seem when the job and the responsibility that you’re giving yourself is to render a world from a century ago or two centuries ago or a thousand years ago, whatever it might be, and to do it with some fair degree of accuracy. Her new book, Ridgerunner, is available from House of Anansi Press.īrad Listi: Before I let you go, I want to ask one more followup question that I think could be useful to people listening who might have some inkling to write or attempt to write historical fiction.
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