The Uses of Nonfiction

Once again, it's been quite a while since my last post -- and every once in a while I get a reminder that someone is actually reading this blog, or trying to! At which point I feel guilty for not providing them with fresh material. So here goes ... and, as I've been advised by more experienced bloggers, I'll try to keep it light and breezy. And short.

So, what have I been doing since I last posted? Well, for one thing, I've written a 280-page novel, which I now have to figure out if I can possibly get published in the current dismal climate. (I'm hoping that a contemporary comic novel about mother-daughter relationships might be more marketable than a 450-page historical novel about two real women no one has ever heard of. But I might be wrong about that.)

I've also gone back, sort of, to the subject of the historical novel I WAS working on, before I took a break a few months ago to write the contemporary one. The only thing is, I'm not actually working on the novel. Instead, I've decided I need to write a nonfiction, scholarly historical article about one of the real women whose life I was going to fictionalize. Why? Because (1) I've discovered this woman was historically significant, and (2) no one knows about her. Fiction has its uses, but in this case the historical record needs to be corrected. And it seems the best way to do that is to put on my historian's hat.

Stay tuned for more on this remarkable woman and why I think historians need to know about her.