It may be a mistake to tell friends and family what I’m
doing – attempting to write something people will read and enjoy – but I do anyway.
Perhaps it’s a way of holding myself accountable. If you tell enough people you’re
writing a novel, maybe you’ll believe it yourself and actually write!
Over horses doovers (aka hors d'oeuvres. Have to look up the
spelling every time) and drinks, I shared with Sue and Laurie the research I’d
done to get a visual on what my dad, Webb Bateman, was seeing as he drove from
Nebraska to North Dakota.
“Phebe, in my writer’s group, pointed out I could check the
weather for March 1939 to make sure it was snowing,” I explained. “Sounded like
a good idea to me, so I did. Cost me $20 to subscribe to a reliable site ( weathersource.com/past-weather/weather-history-reports),
but I actually verified Dad worked in a blizzard on March 4, 1939 in Ogallala, Nebraska, as he
indicated in a letter. But then I found out the snow melted and it was fairly
mild. So I changed my story to get rid of snow as he drove north.”
Sue, who is an avid reader, just
shook her head. I tried to reassure her I wasn’t going to recite the high, low
and median temperatures for every day of the trip. “It’s just a method to get
me in the moment. Besides, Sue, my brain game, Lumosity, indicates I should have been a researcher or scientist or
something like that.” She knows my analytical side well, having worked with me
for twenty years before we both retired. Nonetheless, her head wagged back and
forth again.
Google and I have become very good friends which doesn't say much for my social life. One of the searches helped me with the typography of
Wyoming. “Would my dad have to shift down in a 1930 Chevy Sedan, if he were
going from 3000 to 6000 elevation in 17 miles?” I asked my husband, Scott. He also
looked at me in disbelief.
The research in and of itself hasn't always been riveting, but it's helped my comfort level in writing description. On the other hand, I've found information I'm not sure my 80 year old relatives would approve of. Lyrics from "Dirty Songs of the Twenties and Thirties" are real eyebrow raisers. Then again, Who am I kidding? My relatives probably helped write them. Yup, I’m hooked on research and for now, there may be snow on my roof, but not on my roads.
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