The title of this post says it all. I love writing for a living!
I got back from the Gadling travel bloggers' summit a week ago and since then my work has led me to research the gunfight at the OK Corral, the history of barbed wire, the Lincoln assassination, torture museums around the world, the UFO crash at Roswell, and modern pterodactyl sightings! I've also networked with a ton of bloggers, debunked a cryptozoology photograph, prepped a pitch to speak at a writing conference, and wrote a press release for a photo exhibition my wife and I are doing in June.
Probably the most challenging thing I've had to do this week came from my fiction, when I wrote myself into an interesting corner and had to figure out what happens when the all-white crew of a Civil War Union gunboat has to take a black regiment upriver on a secret and possibly illegal mission. It may become the most interesting chapter in my novel and I didn't even plan it!
How can't you love a job like this?
Very cool! Living your passion while earning money doing is pretty much everyone's dream, writer or not. What stands in the way of achieving it for many is giving up too soon.
ReplyDeleteHi Sean - you have sure been busy .. love the pterodactyl one .. the history of barbed must be interesting too ..
ReplyDeleteFun about where your story is going .. and that could be an interesting adjunct ...
Well you're busy, occupied and obviously full of beans!! Cheers Hilary
How great that you're living your dream! Congrats! :)
ReplyDeleteI am tempted to say "nice work if you can get it" but that would be altogether disparaging of what you've obviously done to get where you are now, so all I will say is well done, enjoy the ride.
ReplyDeleteThat does sound like an interesting corner. Without having read what you've done so far, I would only wonder aloud if the crew of a Union gunboat, especially on a western river, would be all white. I would think the stokers and grunts in the engine and boiler spaces would be black. That might create some tension in terms of how the white sailors viewed blacks?? Possibly also some tension between the naval officers and the white USCT officers? Fascinating.
Many Union vessels did have black crewmen. As far as my research has shown, this was not a universal practice with the inland ships on the Missouri River.
DeleteThe commander of this particular vessel resisted taking on black crewmen because he didn't want to bother segregating the crew's living quarters and canteen. Then he gets saddled with a bunch of black infantry and a secret mission that's almost certainly get him trouble. Things get worse at their first dinner.
Sounds really interesting. I always like to find out new thinks. It's fun to do research. (does that make me weird? :)
ReplyDeleteResearch is one of the best parts of writing (it's also a great way to put off writing, so beware)!
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