You never know when or where inspiration will strike. Sometimes it comes from an observation, a news story, from a book currently being read. Sometimes there’s no explanation for it. We can either follow this and fall into a rabbit hole of creation or we can ignore it.
Not looking for a new novel idea, I have plenty, I was nevertheless inspired by a recent post on the Dirty, Sexy History blog. Despite the name of the blog, not all of it’s posts are dirty or sexy. Their focus is to bring up unique tidbits of history normally never mentioned in books. The post which has inspired a novel I have started working on is about a period in Victorian England where floriography, or the “language” of flowers, was quite popular working alongside Dating to ancient Greek and Roman times, flowers and plants have stood as symbols of love, friendship, dislike, and a rainbow of emotions.
Intrigued, it got me thinking and soon inspiration for a novel came about. I’ll not go into too many details because I don’t like discussing whatever I’m working on. In my opinion, whatever I’m working on could be for myself, could be for a themed anthology, or it could be a novel I may or may not want to pursue getting published. What I will say about my new project is I’m exploring the idea of communicating emotion through flowers. In doing research it became apparent people would create arrangements expressing complex emotions. It’s a very Victorian thing to do. In an age defined by repression of emotion, floriography was a way to creatively let your thoughts and feelings out.
I began thinking about how could I use this to create a story? Unlike so many of my other stories, this is a project where the characters are of my own construction. Beyond a vague concept of the main character, I’m allowing the research to drive the development as well as the setting and plot.
Since this isn’t my first foray into historical fiction, I’m using lessons learned on previous projects. For example, there is such a thing as too much research and it’s easy to get sucked into a research black hole. When I start worrying about nitpicky details then I need to back off. I also set myself a time limit on research. After a month, whatever I had is what I was going to use to develop the characters and the story.
Or so I thought. Admittedly there are knowledge gaps and research, particularly in historical fiction, is never truly done. However, instead of stopping in the middle of writing to go back to research, I’m using the weekends, a time I normally do not write, to work on it. My hope is this will prevent me from overthinking and only stick to relevant information. I’m also hoping it will keep me focused on this being a piece of fiction and not a research paper.
Something different for me is I started writing without a finished outline. I’m a writer who is a hybrid; not a pantser, but I do struggle to have a complete plan before writing. Even with a full outline it changes enormously as the characters and new ideas take over. But for my sanity on the weekends I’m working to flesh out and rework the road map.
I’m excited for this project and hope it will be different from anything I’ve written before. The uniqueness of the subject matter as well as a unique main character is energizing me. I don’t know how long this rough draft will take and I’m not setting a concrete deadline. So, while I’m nervous, this new approach I’m hoping will work for me.
DH Hanni 