research Archives - Marsha Ward

Today a windmill popped up in my Work-in-Progress (WIP). I had no idea the subject would ever be written about, with my characters there in the wilds of New Mexico Territory in 1867, but it seems that my Male Main Character is quite proud of having one of the first such pumping engines in the territory on his rancho.

It so happens that back in 2015, I attended a convention in Lubbock Texas, and made a field trip to the American Windmill Museum. It was a glorious day to view the numerous spectacular windmills in the museum’s inventory, both indoors and out.

Did I take copious notes about windmills, in case I ever needed such knowledge? It appears that I didn’t.

I swear I took pictures, though. I know I took pictures in Palo Duro Canyon on my way home from Texas. Can I find said pictures?

No. They are nowhere to be found.

It appears that I have a gap between 2015 and 2016 in my digital record. What?!?

Instead, by way of illustration for this post, I offer this photo taken by mhamilton456 in 2016 of an outdoor display of some of the windmills at the museum.

I stood, uneasily, beneath that giant white wind turbine shown at center right, my stomach shrinking. The sound was intimidating as the blades whooshed through the air. I moved out from under it as quickly as I could.

The tour of the property was quite fascinating. Notes or accessible photos would have helped my scene, but I have neither. I’ll just have to dredge deep into my memory, or refresh it by way of viewing photos on the Internet so I can write a passable description of the windmill for my scene.

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I recently released a novel, Gone for a Soldier, which took me two years to write and publish. Of course I wasn’t writing solidly for two years, but with intensive research and several drafts, not to mention the publishing side of the equation, traveling to conferences and workshops, and life in general, it was a long two years.

Now I’m in a sort of downtime lull before I begin another work of long-form fiction. I need time to decompress from the stress and focus of the completed task before I begin another like process.

I’ve had people ask me what I do between writing novels. The first thing I do is take a couple of weeks to recover. No writing. Plenty of recreational reading. Sleeping in.

But that can’t last forever. When I’m tired of being a lazy lout, what do I do?

I write shorter fiction. Much shorter, like six thousand words or fewer. I have three stories in the works right now.

Or I write poetry. It’s a totally different discipline of writing.

Or I think. I collect my thoughts. I let ideas swirl around in my mind, mulling over grand “what if’s” for a new work.

Or I analyze and plan. What methods of publicity for my works are best? Should I up my quarterly e-newsletter to six times a year? Should I learn more about using Goodreads? Spend less time on Facebook? More?

Since my books typically come out in the last part of calendar years, a new year is right around the bend, so another thing I do is try to figure out my calendar of projects and travel for the following year: How can I juggle writing and production with traveling to events? What conferences will I attend? Should I make a box set of my novels? What awards will I seek? Will I make the deadlines? How can I make my website more useful? What did I leave undone this year that should be put on next year’s list of projects? Do I have enough inventory of books? Too much? Should I consider cutting back on travel and/or memberships in writing associations? What is my most effective time of day to write? Why am I not on Wikipedia?

Whoa! Enough with the questions. They could take over my life. It may be time to start writing a new novel.

What do you do with your downtime?

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