Crazy research

Slender man.  Biblical history. Jersey Devil. Taoism. Rusalka.. Orbit times. Brewing. Female crossdressers. Alien theories. Mayan civilization. Brokeback mountain. Thunderbird. They all have one thing in common: all of that was in my browsing history starting from about two hours ago, when I decided to finally get grinding on my novel.

Ah, how I love writing.

Crafting a world from scratch is challenging, yet strangely fun. Learning about different cultures and history is just an amazing experience. I love to browse lists of medieval occupations in different countries/cultures. It’s great for character inspiration, or just writing inspiration in general. When I read about an occupation, I can’t help but wonder: “What would a person in this occupation be like? What would his/her day be like?”  The result? The strange combination of research in weird, random, or just obscure subjects (as seen above) and sometimes–if I’m lucky–another character or setting idea.

(Just two quick facts that I found particularly interesting: Medieval brewers (ale makers) were often–gasp–predominately female during an extremely misogynistic time. Also, the hired guards of a tavern would bounce the coins guests gave before entering against a wet piece of wood to test their authenticity before letting them in–hence, the name “bouncers”. )

Detailed royal pedigree for two different countries.

Digging out my old journals and notebooks is amusing as well as inspiring. Some of my ideas and notes were useful (e.g. lists and careful descriptions of different mythological creatures saved me a lot of time), but others have me just in awe at the effect of excessive caffeine on sanity. An example of my momentary (?) loss of sanity is on the left. Apparently, I was too into genetics, and decided to do a detailed royal pedigree depicting magical inheritance/ potential. How long did this take me? I don’t even want to know…. All I am sure of is that it took a hell of a lot of time, and at the end I ended up changing the entire thing all over again.

Anyways, I’ve finally got myself started on a plot that I can probably go with for the rest of the month. Now I’m just finishing last touches of the outline, then it’s writing time. Hopefully going to be doing some sprints tomorrow too. Time to get cracking and catch up on the word count!