Sloth — Blog

One of the problems that I have when writing is that I forget to take breaks. Another problem is that I like to write on my laptop while lying on my couch (as I am right now), and due to the unfortunate placement of all of the tables in my living room, this means that any drink in my vicinity is placed directly behind my head. So, while I have the remnants of an iced tea not two feet away from me, I'm still feeling parched because I don't want to stop typing long enough to sit up, drink the tea, return to my prone position, and adjust my laptop for optimal typing. Then again, I'm *really* thirsty, so perhaps I should reconsider...

Okay, I'm back. I was quite productive today, but almost all of it came between 6:30pm and 10:30pm. I also had a brief spurt for an hour and a half this morning, but between dropping off and picking up my car from the service station, mailing some stuff, eating lunch, reading a couple of chapters out of a creative writing textbook, and buying waaaaay too much stuff at Sephora, I had quite a lazy afternoon. I like to think it was just what I needed, though, and I'm feeling much more relaxed and ready to tackle more writing this weekend.

I wrote 3258 words today, or approximately thirteen pages. This got me through the rest of Malcolm and Amelia's wedding scene, and I'm about halfway through the subsequent breakfast. I intend to finish that scene tomorrow, then go back and revisit the first three chapters leading into the wedding to make sure they flow properly and are fast-paced enough to build reader interest. If I'm going to accomplish all of that tomorrow, sleep is imperative tonight, so I suppose I should go to bed!

I wasn't as productive with the book tonight as I would have liked. I spent far too much time playing around on Wikipedia, abandoning my recent tactic of putting [CHECK] after any dubious or uncertain historical fact while writing the first draft. This tactic is a good one, since it encourages me to stay out of the interweb and away from doing a 'quick' lookup that leads into a three-hour journey down a variety of rabbit-holes. But I was debating whether to give Ferguson a fan, since the most over-the-top dandies seem to have some sort of ridiculous affectation, and that led to a lot of reading up on fashion websites.

The problem is that there is real history, in terms of contemporary accounts, well-researched nonfiction, etc. And then there is 'romance history' -- the world that Regency romance has built up over several decades, with 'rules' and 'facts' that are now accepted as the gold standard by most readers, but that just aren't very historically accurate. For instance, the waltz -- it wasn't danced at all in the early Regency, was still seen as very risque during the mid-Regency, and only came into wider acceptance in 1815 or 1816 (or later, depending on your source). But every Regency romance has the hero and heroine waltzing with each other, because the other dances of the time were more group-style (think country line-dancing, only without the boots, plaid, and awful music), and group dances where the hero and heroine are only together for bits and pieces aren't conducive to flirty conversations.

So now I have a dilemma on my hands. Do I write a romance that is as grounded in fact as possible, even if that means doing away with conventions that are accepted (and even expected) by most readers? Or do I ignore some of this and accept that these romances aren't historically accurate anyway, and just write stories that are fun and engaging? What do you prefer to read?