Remember when Alice went through the Looking Glass to Wonderland? This is how I feel when I’m doing internet research. I think the metaphor is apt…I’m looking to make meaning, to understand, and I look into the giant mirror, the screen that leads me into new worlds, and whose temptations are many, and whose answers only lead to more questions, and more, and more…
I didn’t consciously realize that a big part of my nature is to be constantly seeking, and that therefore, research is in my blood as much as is writing. My friend Shona laughs when I say in a conversation recently on Zoom, “I didn’t realize until recently how much I actually love research.” I’m looking at her as if I’ve just imparted this great new self-awareness and she rolls her eyes back at me. “I’ve known that about you forever,” she says.
Well, some things about your self just sneak up on you, even when you’re working hard at flushing them out on purpose. Yes, I love research, and I only become consciously aware of this recently, though I’ve known since I was eight or nine that I would be a writer.
I’m currently working on a five-generation family history. Here is what my desktop looks like on an average day:
If I’ve taken my ADD meds, I can usually stay focused and manage these multiple documents and maintain control. But other times, I go chasing the White Rabbit of research along so many winding paths, forests, mountains and oceans, even other worlds, that sometimes I actually forget what my original question was. Just yesterday, the simple question “What is a quoit of rope in 19th Century sailor jargon?” sent me on a two-hour long journey deep into the recesses of the complex and irresistibly colorful world of 19th century merchant sailing ships. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there, of course, but this time was different. Really. (I say that every time, to myself; nobody else is listening of course.)
Recently I watched a terrific writing panel discussion hosted by SaskBooks that featured accomplished historical fiction authors Marina Endicott, Caroline Adderson and Alix Hawley (you can view it until April 8 here). One of the things I was gratified to hear was that this is a common peril. When I grow up, I want to be a historical fiction author, so it was a real joy to hear them discuss a lot of the issues surrounding the telling of stories that happened in the past, or that they imagined did.
So of course I ordered some of their books – kind of random choices amongst their work, and when they arrived, I took the first one off the pile and dove in. It just happened (does anything really just happen, though?) that it was Endicott’s The Voyage of the Morning Light (Norton, 2019), the story of a young girl traveling the South Seas in 1912 aboard a merchant ship with her sister and brother-in-law, the ship’s Captain. (It’s a beautiful book, by the way…perfect summer reading!)
This story parallels the current family history story I’m working on so closely that it gave me goosebumps as soon as I realized what it was about. And now I’m happily distracted in yet another way from my work: the line I feed myself is that it’s just more research, right?
And yet, yet…I’m squishy marshmallow sunshine peachy happy right smack in the middle of all this material. It almost doesn’t matter what is the subject; it’s the activity of seeking and finding that gives me some sort of all-over, from-the-inside-out glow. Like I’m at home. Like I’m part of something bigger, older, grander. Even if my only connection to it is learning about it and then writing about it.
It’s not a straight line, it’s a crazy whirly messy line, but eventually I do manage to get there. Every time. This is book number 4, and with any luck there will be opportunity to do fictionalized work based on the story (now I’m getting to know it so well!) that will get me even closer to my grown-up goal.
I’m thinking Alice was ultimately happier traipsing around Wonderland, with all its frights and uncertainties and delights, than she ever was staring at herself in the Looking Glass. I know I am.
Alice going through the Looking Glass, Wikimedia Commons.
