I don't hate writing. I love to write. Like I love to go places. I just hate the actual "going" part. Put me into some altered state, at the end of which I'll have a finished book and no memory of the process. It'd be like the blissful half-sleep I find in the passenger seat of a car on a long trip. Nothing but a distant yet happy sense of missing all of the hassle.
Otherwise, the trip has to be interesting. I've got to drive past ruins or old cemeteries. The trip, itself, has to be the destination.
I once heard Paul Watkins speak to a group of high school students. He talked about his process, and how he hangs notes and scraps of paper on the wall until he can hear them flutter when he opens the door. The room sighs, he said. And that's when he knows he's done researching. Then he writes.
I'd always gone a different route. Take Toothless. I already knew a fair amount about Knights Templar, and other things. Enough to start writing, I felt. Research? A little. Sure, there are echoes of real history. Martin's sword coming from Germany, for example, because that's where some early examples of Oakeshott Type XIIIa come from, and the 12th century is pretty early for anything bigger than an arming sword.
But, really. Once the zombies start marching--and that's on page 1--the world is mine. Did I get the organization of the Knights Templar wrong? Maybe in the real world, but in my world, well, the dead started walking around. Did I misunderstand the relationship between church and state? Or the geopolitics of 12th century kingdoms? Well, you see, a rampaging army of demons was pulling a big evil tree on a cart across France. And then there were werewolves. So, yeah, people made other choices.
The Centennial Horror is a different animal. (Though there are werewolves.) In Chapter II, Patrick (our hero) washes his face--a brief moment to establish his, well, dirtiness. But where does the water come from? Did Phildelphia have running water in 1876? (Hydrants in the street, I'm thinking. So, sink in his apartment becomes a pan of water.) How about street lights? The first lit up Second Street in 1841, but where and when else? Were the streets paved? Cobblestones? Does he have to walk on dirt streets in the dark to City Hall? But was City Hall even built yet? Turns out construction was halted because they couldn't afford the marble. A commemorative map shows the unfinished foundation and the cranes, as if the construction site had been silent long enough to have become a fixture, even a landmark. In one photo, the pile of marble looks like the base of a pyramid. But the Masonic Temple was there, right across the street. And, research reveals, the architect of the temple actually worked on some of the world's fair buildings. And that's important to the story. And so's the notion of a pyramid, actually.
So, research can be exciting. The trip can be the destination. If I'm interested, and I'm informed, I'll write a richer novel.
But I can feel the research becoming a distraction. Something for me to do instead of writing. If I keep reading, I'll know an awful lot and will be ready to write a Dan Brown novel. I'm not Dan Brown.
Or Paul Watkins. My room's sigh will be the gasp of its going unconscious after holding its breath for too long.
So, I'm forcing myself to write. Two chapters are done. And, by "done" I mean recorded on my Olympus dictation thing. Which means I still need to write them. Which means that I'll wrestle with questions along the way. Running water to his apartment, or pan that he filled from a Fairmount Water Works hydrant bathed in the light of a Philadelphia Gas Works street lamp, its decorative flourishes filled by three decades of chalky black paint? But when did those lamps actually appear in the streets just north of City Hall? Hopefully by 1876.
And if not by 1876? Then he walks in the dark. Or maybe the werewolves put them there.
Stay tuned.
