Progress Week 7: Editing to Find Where I'm At

Everyone always tells me I don't need to research so much in general, but I find that that isn't quite the case. I usually have to research each element of the scene to add the correct building features, to find examples of the environment i.e. specific names of trees, plants, birds likely to be encountered. 

But before I can do that, I need to research the heart of my characters, what education, training, skills, environment, political system that they live within and use that to help mold their voice and style of addressing the world.

So I've laid the current novel I'm working on out to be an exploration of ideas as well as the life story of a young woman in China. I'm taking the political ideas and searching for a way for them to be portrayed in a meaningful and unique way. I'm missing a lot of my political science books.

So I took all my scraps and pieces I've written, combined them into chapters according to my outline, futzed with the outline, edited them all to use the current names I've come up with. Also did that with my more recent short stories since they were intended to fit together. Sounds like nothing but it is progress.

Meanwhile, I'm working on an essay about feminist science fiction based on a book I read. My husband and I have read almost all of Anne of Green Gables to each other, the down side is I've learned to gush so very terribly much like the young lady character. I just read Anne's hair scene and I think I will try to avoid having a hair scene in this novel.

I'm beginning to participate more in LinkedIn groups and have worked on my travel articles and reviews. My current travel is one more trip where I am visiting geological sites. Geology plays a role in my current novel, in my trilogy I was writing when I got sidetracked into this current story, in my dinosaur tales and in many of my short stories. Eventually, I'll start a geology blog. The travel articles help support my follow on to my golf book.