For reasons best known to my muse (I’m so going to kill the bitch) I’ve been on a weird-history jag right along side the excruciatingly awful fanfic porn jag (and by “excruciatingly awful” I mean it would be more merciful to scrape your eyes out with a rusty spoon. But the bitch keeps dragging me back to it. If you really want an idea of how horrific it is, Google “reader insert” then read some of the offerings that show up on something like fanfiction.net. Yes, this is why I need to murder my muse).

The weird history is kind of fun, though. After a while things start taking on odd perspectives and the fun you can have weaving this shit into other stories (the way Terry Pratchett’s been doing for years) and making it look like it really belongs.

For me, this is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing, when something I’ve been reading about because my muse sent me off on a wild-goose chase (not – please God not – the fanfic, but the other stuff) for semi-linked oddities suddenly decides it belongs in something I’m writing and the next thing I know I’ve got this lovely aside that turns what I’ve been doing so much deeper and stronger. It’s happened to me a few times (okay, more than a few), but it’s always a delight when I realize my subconscious has gone and pulled another fast one on me. I think its in cahoots with my muse, because the two of them sit there and look smug whenever I suggest that they might get better results if they didn’t hide stuff from me until they let it come out of my fingers when I’m typing.

Yes, I realize that sounds totally insane. I personify some things and reify others to give myself an analogical handle on something that there aren’t words to explain, and it sounds beyond crazy. I’m a writer and I get inside other people’s heads for fun. This is not something normal people do.

So. The odd research jags. The current one is hitting assorted bits and pieces of European history, mostly the funky little stuff. It will probably emerge into something involving the politicking of fictional nations. If I’m lucky it will combine strangely with some of my other odd research streaks and all these odd threads of information will weave themselves into the story I’m working on at the time and turn it into something much richer – adding, as Pooh Bah would say, artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Yes, I do see the end result as a bit like a tapestry, where a needle with a bit of different thread can highlight something that would otherwise have been pretty unremarkable or where the wrong thread will totally bugger up the way things are supposed to blend together. All the threads that should be there need to be there for the whole piece to have its full effect, but without them you can still sometimes see the shape of what should be there but it might be muted because the highlight threads aren’t there, or it could be jarring because there’s something been threaded through it that just doesn’t work and breaks up the piece instead of working with it.

Of course, me being the extreme pantser that I am, I can’t plan these things in advance. My brain just does not work that way. So I end up doing what I’m doing now – reading all sorts of weird stuff all over the Internets, probably giving some poor NSA drones absolute fits (“damn it, that’s the tenth time she’s looked up world war 2 uniforms, and it’s always in conjunction with that freaky tentacle stuff… How the hell does someone who does that live a half way normal life?” “Maybe we could –” “NO! We are NOT activating the cameras there. Never. Ever.” “Sir? There’s a delivery van outside with 500 gallons of brain bleach, and the driver’s complaining that the check bounced last time.”) and ultimately… who knows?

Maybe the next thing I write will be the tapestry that uses those threads. And maybe I won’t poke metaphorical holes in what’s left of my sanity with the needles.