Reading history for fun

I love history. I've loved it since I was a kid. My favorite time periods are Ancient Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt, and the Dark Ages, Medieval, and Renaissance Europe. Get up past the Industrial Revolution and that's where I start to lose interest. It's not that it isn't interesting. And U.S. History is something I should take some time to study. I just prefer the older time periods.

I'm researching something now that I've never looked at before: the Persian Empire. The one that spanned a good chunk of the Middle East, Egypt, and into Europe. It was one of the largest Empires that ever existed, holding sway over around 50 million people at its height. It began to weaken and then fell when Alexander the Great came in but it was the first of its kind.

I'm doing this research as part of my world building for my books, but even if I weren't reading it for that I'd still be reading it. Himself suggested it and it got me hooked from the start. I'm wanting to go to the library as well as reading online and see if I can find historical books that talk about the Persian Empire. I want to know more than I'm finding online.

This is what I do. I find something that catches my attention and I research it, whether I plan on using it in a story or not. I checked out a book recently about Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth I's grandmother. I wasn't researching anything. It was to satisfy my own curiosity about the woman. I've deviated from my chosen period of history in the past as well, digging into the days of the pioneers and learning what life was like for them. Living around parts of the Oregon Trail, and even being able to take a day trip into Oregon to see the big Oregon Trail museum helps.

I pursue these things because I love history. Himself loves coding and hunts down what he can as information on that. I've seen him spend hours on projects where he's hunched over his keyboard doing things that are complete mysteries to me. He's told me what he's doing and I still don't understand it. But it is one of his favorite things and what he wants to learn about.

What's one thing you like learning about? What do you spend your time reading about?

Internet panic attacks

I want to talk a moment about causing yourself a panic attack when you read an article online on what you think is a reputable site. It can happen to all of us. I know it happened to me last week. I saw this article here and about had a heart attack. I'm on food stamps and being forced to buy products made in Idaho would wipe out my budget faster because they're more expensive.

Now, I've done more research and none of the other local news feeds have picked up on this. Which means they either don't see it as big news or it's not going to happen. I don't really know which one it is. But I've also checked the Department of Health and Welfare's site and I don't see anything on there about it either. So I don't know if it's going to happen or not.

I trust Boise Weekly because they've had some interesting articles but sometimes I don't know how accurate they are. No one else reports on them. So I never know if it's accurate or just not reported. But what's important here is by reading something, I need to stop reacting to it and do the research first.

That's what we all need to do. There's a lot of stuff on the internet and a lot of it is not accurate or even true. We can't take a page at face value. Snopes is a good place to look for some things. It can debunk or confirm some of those stories people post on Facebook or you get in the email. Always check another source – or two, or three – before you decide it's true.

What about you? Has there ever been an article you got upset about before researching it? What was it about?

Saturday Story Building - Research

It doesn't matter what genre you write, research is the key to your writing.

Research can be as simple as reading books in your chosen genre to see what others are writing. Or looking up information on the city you're using for your setting. It can be as complex as researching the lives and cultures of different races to incorporate them into your world. It can be simply looking at maps or it can be poring over old documents to get a better feel for how things were done.

I've done a lot of research on what life was like in medieval times. Most of the books I've read detailed medieval England, but there was enough in them to show me what medieval life was like in other parts of Europe. I've started doing research on Ancient Egypt, on Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire. These things will all find their way in some form into my stories, whether I borrow whole cloth or use just snippets of information to create my societies.

I know one author who researched how to cook over an open fire. Another one researched food in the Middle Ages to make a feast scene she was writing more believable. I know authors who have researched the etymology of the names they're using to make sure they fit with the story.

It doesn't matter what type of research you do, just do it. Open your mind. Expand your knowledge. Even if what you're researching isn't precisely what you need for the story you're working on, don't discard it. Keep it. You never know when you might need it for a story.

Why am I up? (Artists vs. Writers...Break Room edition)

It's barely 4 am.  I've been up since 3:30 am.  Why am I up?

It's simple: I need computer time for my writing, and I don't get it after work.  Downside to only having one computer.  One of us has to take their time in the morning before work (we leave together since he's my driver...and we have similar schedules).  The other gets it when we get home.  Given that I'm usually really tired after work, it works out - although personally I think part of the reason I'm so tired is the fact that by the time I go to bed I've been up for 16-18 hours.

My roommates asked me why I'm doing this.  "You've got a pen and notebook.  Write that way, and then on your days off write on the computer.  He doesn't get up until late afternoon anyway."

They've got a point, but I made another one: I need to do research.  Half the time I spend online is because I'm doing research on one topic or another.  I'm getting a good starting point for when I finally pay off those pesky library fines and can start checking out library books again.  Once I do that, I'll probably still spend quite a bit of time researching because, frankly, the internet is a lot faster and easier on the budget than driving to the library twice a week.

That got me thinking: what exactly is it a writer does?  We got onto a discussion of art vs. writing in the break room one day because one of the art students was working on her research paper, and I was working on the notes for the WIP.  One of my co-workers made the crack that writers have it easy.  "All you do is sit down, put words on paper, and voila! You have 'art'!"

I get up early, do my research, write between calls and on my breaks long hand at work, and when I get home I'm STILL working because I'm revising notes, editing manuscripts, and going over my research from earlier in the day/week.  I've talked to writers from the NaNoWriMo group who routinely get into fights with SO's because they don't understand this drive to write that we all share.  Even outside the yearly torture in November, they spend hours during the week writing.  Most of those like me who work in jobs where they can write in their spare moments do so.

Others actually travel to the places they're writing about or using as references for their work.  We put a lot of effort into our "babies", and then when we're done we ruthlessly chop our "babies" down and then send them out to be further ridiculed by those in authority.  When we FINALLY get someone to take our "babies" seriously, we end up having to do more chopping and tweaking until it's time to see them go out into the world to be introduced to others who we hope will love them as much as we do.

When I explained this to the co-worker, she just snorted and made another crack: "Artists still have it harder than writers."

I don't think we have it easier or harder than anyone else.  We just do what we do and hope for the best.  Both artists and writers are like that.  We're no better than each other.  We have our different mediums, our different artistic styles, and we all have different ways of seeing the world.  We take those different views of the world and turn them into works of art - even if they're only works of art in our own eyes.