For some people, and in some genres, whenever they have a spare moment, because research isn’t that important to getting things right in their stories, or because they already know the world they are writing in. Then there are writers like yours truly …

Frederick Jackson Turner published one book, and two major articles, all of which shaped the field of Western History to this day. He should have done a lot more, could have done a lot more, but there’s a reason why his publisher said that the publisher’s epitaph should be, “I Got a book out of Frederick Jackson Turner.” Turner researched. He researched to the point that he didn’t write, because he had to be completely certain that he had all the correct information. Given that he lived in the late 1800s, that was a challenge. When he died, he had huge amounts of research notes, probably sufficient for a dozen books at least. He had published one (1) book.

If he’d had the internet, he’d still be researching the first book, one suspects.

The lesson for historians is that at some point, just stop and write. Something will always be overlooked, or turn up later. But just write. This is also true for fiction writers. At some point, just stop and tell the story. Make up bits as you go, bits that fill in what you haven’t found yet, but write. The unwritten story doesn’t sell, can’t be told or read, isn’t really alive. Just write it.

I’ve mentioned that the current WIP stalled out because my hind brain realized I didn’t have enough to build the world properly, and the the plot I’d envisioned wouldn’t fit. I’d read politics, sort of, learned about the people called Picts, the “real” Merlyn as best ethnographers and historians can suss out, and had been in the area. However, that doesn’t build a world. So after doing other things, I latched onto a book recommended on a different blog, and from there discovered what I needed to learn to fill in the holes and create a believable character and setting.

This was very good. However, I had to stop at some point and write. For one, the unwritten book gathers no sales. For two, research books get expensive quickly [muttermutter university press prices muttermutter]. For three, I don’t care to be the Frederick Jackson Turner of the fiction world. The story needs to be written so I can get to other projects. For four, writing is stress relief and heaven knows I need some of that.*

The other thing, in this case, is that I’d run out of readily accessible general books. From this point on what remains are ever more specialized archaeological and linguistic studies, or, ah, somewhat inventive works that owe more to the author’s desired past than to the archaeology and few written sources. Yes, I could dig more deeply, read more monographs, research farther into the details of the place and time and times before, but … That takes money and time. Enough of both had been spent on research.

Rump firmly in chair, writing resumed. It is starting to flow, slowly but steadily, as I work what I learned into the plot and frame the world around Tuathal mab Bria, the master bard and half brother of one of the kings of DalRiada.

*Nothing major, aside from the H-ll Cold, which combined with allergies to leave me dragging for a week or so.