No worries though. There will be no hammering of Revolutionary War
trivia at you. I will be speaking in general terms alone, so stop nervously
glancing at that exit door. There will be time enough for fleeing later.
What has surprised me most in my current fever of researching are the
tidbits I find myself jotting down as I read.
Instead of the cold, hard facts about the imprisonment of soldiers in
the prison ships in Wallabout Bay, I’ve honed in on the actual words the former prisoner uses to
describe his experience. Such as, what
the prisoners would call the ship? What did the guards, both kind and heartless,
call the captured soldiers? What terms the imprisoned men used to describe
areas of the hellish ship?
The cold, hard facts about how long the Jersey was or how many guns she once held have mattered little to
my hungry imagination. (Usually I devour these kinds of facts like M&M’s…. you
know, the more the merrier.)
But, apparently, I have actually grown as a writer. I now zero in more
on contemporary impressions than numbers and specs.
I’ve finally realized that in writing a historical novel true to the
historical characters doesn’t mean a reliance on history.
Hmm. Who knew?
Until tomorrow…
Chloe
