Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The rewriting continues - although I'm not sure I can call it rewriting as mostly I am deepening the research for historical authenticity. I use the authenticity word to mean "creating the world" rather than implying I'm going to be historically accurate. I am trying to get the details correct but I'm sure there will be small mistakes, and of course because many of my characters are fictional, they dictate the story so the timeline won't be exactly right either.
It's interesting, after all this time and with all the books and photocopied materials and website printouts I have gathered, to see what some people put on their websites and how much is just plain wrong! I found a website the other day that eventually I decided was mostly fiction - it was a site for a role-playing game but the person had put enough information there to make me wonder whether it was ALL fabricated or perhaps some of it was true. I've found that the most "trustworthy" sites are those from state governments and universities where they are using genuine sources and quoting them.
After a couple of false starts (lack of concentration) I am finally reading "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. The narrator is Death - thankfully he has a sense of humour - and it has little heading-and-comment things inserted. An interesting device. The characters are gradually becoming more substantial but I need to read another 50 pages before I can work out if I like it or not.
The Stein book continues to be useful. I read a few pages at a time and then think about my novel. Keep having to find bits of paper to write myself notes (such as - make this clearer, check that, work on this minor character more).
Enough blogging - time to write/rewrite/edit.

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