Head in the 18th Century

So I’m sitting here at work with my email, internet and word processor, sitting in a multi-level building with my car close by. My fingers tap and my mouse clicks, putting together next month’s internal newsletter. But my head is somewhere far away… in England, in the early 18th Century.

This is the setting for my novel, you see. The more I write, the more I find the need to research, reading bits of trivia and biography every chance I get. My manuscript is also open, but I know I won’t get time to really concentrate on it. Wishful thinking. My thoughts skip from our summer promotions to what it was like growing up on a country estate two hundred years ago.

It’s a challenge, this period writing and research. There are little details about life back then that you suddenly realise you know nothing about, and your sentence can never be complete until you track the wretched facts down. I also get bogged down in the research, getting more information than I need and procrastinating wildly while I read it all. Because right now I’m having to make hard decisions in my manuscript, and I don’t like it. Carefree inspiration has been replaced by hesitant editing. I’ve come so far; what if I screw it up now? The word count crawls painfully towards 91,000 as I tweak. Must concentrate when after dinner tonight. Must push through and get it done. Before the end of the year, I want to have a finished manuscript in my hands! … I will need to be a lot more disciplined if it’s going to happen.