Research

Over the years, I’ve taken hundreds of pictures for my research files. I write mostly western historical, so I haunt museums. Nothing gets the details down quite like the actual item: studying it, imagining your character using it, feeling it. Many of my pictures are the old-fashioned film kind and admittedly, I never did find a good way to file them so they were easy to find.

Digital photos help with that, but replacing all my film photos with digital would mean revisiting a lot of museums. I wouldn’t mind. Virginia City Nevada was a step back in time, mysterious and haunting. I didn’t get enough of Cody, Wyoming, but the truth is, right where I live is rich with museums and western history.

My local amusement park has a pioneer village tucked in among water rides and carousel where homes and cabins, a livery, a church and furnishings can be studied and photographed. Wednesday I spent a few hours doing just that.

It’s not like I don’t have all the details, props and facts already researched and figured out for Ellie and the Tie-down Man, but I wanted to get the feel and reality of the times. It would have been even better if I could have touched the table worn smooth by scrubbing, run my hands over the quilt made with one inch squares from a family’s worn-out clothes, or felt the heat of the potbellied room stove.

Instead, I stood at the glass partition separating me from the relics and tried to erase all the other looky-loos and put myself into that cabin with the best of my imagination. It worked, too, for the most part, (aside from the smell of chlorine, hot dogs and fries.)

I came home with wonderful pictures, a sense of time and place I needed and notes for some poetry that’s been wanting out, wanting attention. You see, as hard as I’m working on my novel, I still sneak time for my poetry. I have to. The poetry demands it. And as I said, poetry has always lead me into my best writing, helped me find my voice and taught me about concise wording.

I have been gathering together poems I’ve written with the hopes they could become a chapbook. I’ve figured out the title and direction I want the book to go. And the two projects are keeping me focused. Better yet, the research was a boost to both and a good day spent out of the office.